A Root Awakening: Vocabulary Instruction for Older Students with Reading Difficulties

There is reliable evidence that new vocabulary is primarily acquired through wide independent reading. However, struggling readers tend to avoid reading, resulting in limited word encounters and inadequate vocabulary growth, and they often have difficulties inferring the meanings of new words from context. While there are no clear solutions to the problem of vocabulary acquisition for older students with reading difficulties, there are instructional approaches that have some evidence of effectiveness for this population. We describe the research base and promising practices related to three aspects of vocabulary instruction: (1) creating a verbal learning environment that fosters word consciousness, (2) selecting and teaching specific words, and (3) teaching an independent word learning strategy through a combination of contextual and morphemic analysis. These instructional approaches are grounded in overarching principles recognized by researchers as being characteristic of effective instruction for students with learning difficulties, including explicit instruction, promoting cognitive and collaborative engagement, and providing many opportunities for practice, including distributed practice, with teacher feedback. Finally, we discuss the possibilities inherent in a cross‐content schoolwide approach to vocabulary instruction at the secondary level. We conclude with a call for additional research examining the effectiveness of instructional approaches to vocabulary development for secondary school students with reading difficulties, including a schoolwide collaborative model.     

Guns,ghosts, and monsters: Menace or meaning in aggressive play?

A group of six boys is constructing rayguns with large Tinker Toys. Proclaiming themselves Ghostbusters, they creep across the classroom toward the housekeeping area, where several children are quietly playing. A teacher intercepts the boys and asks them to help her set up an art activity. They comply but soon return to Ghostbusters.Susan M. Gottschall is an instructor in early childhood education and a classroom consultant at Chicago City-Wide College. She received psychoanalytic training at the University of Chicago's Orthogenic School under Bruno Bettelheim.     

The Concept of Education Revisited

Enquiries into the meanings of words and the nature of things are first distinguished, and two different senses of 'concept' identified: a first sense in which 'concept' is attached to empirical facts, and a second sense in which a concept marks a purely logical space. The concept of education, in the second sense, is seen to be inevitable for human beings, and already carries certain values with it.