Five School District 65 teachers at Washington school and their students are participating in the second year of a federally funded research study investigating ways for fourth- and fifth-grade teachers to structure comprehensive approaches to vocabulary instruction in their classrooms.
District 65 is one of three sites re-funded by the Institute of Educational Sciences as part of a larger study directed by Dr. James Baumann of the University of Missouri. The Evanston site is directed by Dr. Camille Blachowicz of National-Louis University with the assistance of Drs. Ann Bates and Char Cieply. The District was chosen because of the highly qualified teaching staffs and because of the excellence of its work with multilingual and multicultural student populations, said Dr. Blachowicz.
Washington teachers Kelly DeRosa, Colleen Kelly, Vanessa Herrera, Julia Starenko and Carol Clay are providing examples of the ways that teachers can integrate the four essential components of vocabulary instruction into their classroom routines. The model, based on the work of Dr. Baumann, Dr. Blachowicz and others, proposes a four-component approach: ensuring rich language experiences intentional teaching of individual words building word-learning strategies and developing word consciousness (interest in words and knowledge of how they work).