Competency 10: Vocabulary, Academic Language, and Background Knowledge: Role in Reading Development and Factors That Affect Development

RICA Reflection

Competency 10: Vocabulary, Academic Language, and Background Knowledge: Role  in Reading Development and Factors That Affect Development

Introduction

RICA competency ten address that there are many types of ways in which to learn vocabulary; listening, speaking, writing, and while reading: sight, and meaning. Academic language differs because it is used in textbooks and in the classroom and not in a social environment. Background knowledge is the knowledge that one knows about a specific topic, this is the foundation where greater knowledge can be built.

Personal Connection/Evidence

There are a many ways that I have engaged with this competency

During my time in the first grade classroom as I was teaching my guided lesson, I noticed when I reviewed the "words to know" the students were able to decode the words but when I asked the the meaning of the words there were some who were unable to to explain. Their reading comprehension is low, I had to stop and explain what the words meant to ensure knowledge of the text.

Background knowledge is essential tool to use when helping students with their comprehension. Accessing the prior knowledge helps the students be able to make the connections needed for new information to be learned.

For the vocabulary learning as an incremental process this helps students understand the meaning of words on different levels; unknown, acquainted, established. Taking the time in my classrooms to stop to check for meaning or front loading them with the meanings help them focus on the concept versus word meaning. "The most challenging task for a teacher is to teach students the meanings of words that fall in the unknown category."(p. 77) Being able to look up definitions of words is something that I do when I am with my fifth grade class. We will stop class to ensure knowledge is being gained. Click here for some tips to help you learn vocabulary.

Text-to-Text Connections

“When teachers explicitly teach strategies with the purpose of eventually fostering independent use of the strategies, teachers are scaffolding instruction. With respect to teaching comprehension, scaffolded instruction means that the teacher model strategies step-by-step and explicitly demonstrate the process of thinking before, during, and after one reads.” (RLTR, p. 287)

“Teachers need to be aware that students from culturally, linguist sickly, and social diverse background will bring a wide range of experiences to the classroom. These experiences will influence how students understand or fail to understand their textbooks.” (RLTR, p. 396) (In regards to background knowledge)

“There is no question that wide reading and thus learning the meaning of words from context is an important way for people to extend the vocabularies. ‘Anyone interested in increasing student vocabularies should see that that they read as much as widely as possible’”(RLTR, p. 273)

TPE Connections

TPE 2: Monitoring Student Learning During Instruction

TPE 3: Interpretation and Use of Assessments

TPE 4: Making Content Accessible