Wayne Scolpini

EDUC 403
Action Research

Abstract

The focus of my study was to implement vocabulary intervention

strategies on 2 students that had been in the United States for less than one year.

During my study there was a variability in student attendance and some

intervention strategies were found to be ineffective. I finally settled on a

modified strategy used to teach students that have learning disabilities, this way

the student was not overwhelmed with the study. I was able to implement this

strategy with one student during her work on a project in the class.

The results for the modified strategy proved useful. The study needs to be

replicated on more than one student and for a longer period of time to create a

more accurate result.

In completing 100+ hours of fieldwork observations in various schools across New York

State there was something that I noticed the students struggling with in the classes I had

observed. The students struggled with reading comprehension. At first, I thought perhaps the

reading was too difficult but upon further investigation I saw that the students did not

understand some of the words that they were reading. There was a clear misconnection with

vocabulary knowledge in the context that the words were being used. In doing fieldwork

observations of an eleventh-grade economics classroom in the Bronx, New York, I noticed that

some of the students were struggling heavily with the vocabulary being used in this content
area. Research has shown that vocabulary knowledge can significantly increase reading

comprehension up to 70% on tests and vocabulary intervention strategies help all students

(Bromely, 2014). In this study I aim to answer a few questions. 1.) Why are students struggling

with the vocabulary in social studies? 2.) How can we help students recognize words easier in

social studies? and 3.) How can we improve student’s long-term vocabulary knowledge?

The Plan

This study was conducted in an 11th grade economic class at a high school in the Bronx,

New York. Over the course of my observations and the implementation of the study, the

strategies and the participants changed, making the results of the test very specific, but the

process is repeatable. If the study had been conducted the way it turned out from the

beginning, the results would be more effective. I began the study by choosing two students that

had been in the country for less than a year. I had chosen two different vocabulary strategies to

use on the students to gauge the effectiveness of each strategy. I was originally going to use

context clue models for the vocabulary interventions, but I decided to change. I would use each

strategy one week with each student then switch the strategies and the students. I was going to

use the semantic word map model with one student and the Frayer model with the other. The

plan was to introduce the models to both students in the 15 minutes before class time and then

implement them during the period in which they were working on their projects. All of this plan

changed when both students did not show up for 2 weeks of class and I found out they had

moved and changed schools. I had to rush to put together a new plan. I decided that I was going

to work with one student who struggled mightily with everything she does in the class. For the
sake of this study, I will refer to the student as Samantha. Because of the setback with the plan, I

was only left with three weeks to implement a new plan and collect the data for this study. The

plan ended up as follows:

 Step 1 March 26th: Meet with the student 10 minutes before class starts to discuss the

semantic word map strategy and how we will use it to pick out words she is struggling

with in her project research. Watch and help Samantha with the implementation of the

semantic word map.

 Step 2 April 2nd: Meet with the student 10 minutes before class starts to go over

previous weeks semantic word map and gauge her response to the strategy. Introduce

Frayer model strategy. Use Frayer model during class research time to learn the words

the student is struggling with.

 Step 3 April 16th: Meet with the in the 10 minutes before class to go over notes and

compare the two models and chose which one the student likes more and wants to use

going forward.

The plan was just that, a plan. For this study I had planned to work with two different students,

but when they moved schools, I had to readjust the plan. When we met on April 16th, I could

see that Samantha was still not grasping some of the words. So, I asked her if she liked the two

vocabulary strategies we used, and she said she did not like them. She told me there was too

much work involved and she got to confused with all the different parts when I was not there to

help her. Samantha revealed this to me during our pre-class meeting on April 16th. I was not

sure what to think or what to do, so I remembered a different strategy I had read about while
preparing for this study. I decided to look up the steps to this model and implement them

during the class on April 16th, hoping that Samantha would take to the new model.

Research

When choosing which strategy, I wanted to use for the students I had to conduct

extensive research on why vocabulary strategies are important to reading comprehension. Also,

I had to do research on which strategies would be most effective in social studies classrooms.

Ilhan (2019) says that students that struggle with reading have a limited ability to learn new

words, a limited knowledge of strategies to expand their learning and no way to read to

understand texts; this is all very frustrating for the readers. There is no denying that if students

do not understand the words, they are reading that there is no way to understand the reading

at all. This is not just limited to students, this encompasses everyone. One of the strategies I

looked at to use was context clues. The context clues 3 step strategy introduced by Ilhan (2019)

starts with “play and question” where students ask if the word, they are reading makes sense, if

they do not recognize the word or it does not make sense, they pass it to step 2. Step 2 is “slow

advance”, where students slow down and read the sentence slowly. They read the surrounding

sentences and see if they can infer what the word is. If they still cannot figure out the word,

they move to step 3; “stop and rewind”. In this step the students will go back and read a

sentence or two before the word and see if they can figure out the word that way (Ilhan 2019).

The second strategy I investigated using was a vocabulary intervention strategy used by Lesaux

et al. (2010) that was designed for linguistically diverse students in urban middle schools. Lesaux

et al. (2010) said that students in urban schools are disproportionately introduced to vocabulary
words and this negatively affects their reading comprehension skills. Because vocabulary and

reading comprehension are reciprocal, having more knowledge of words will increase students

reading comprehension (Lesaux et al., 2010). The intervention strategy used by Lesaux et al. was

based on the ALIAS program that revolved around shirt readings, over a long time. The strategy

included four steps as follows: Step 1- Preview the reading, Step 2- read the article out loud,

Step 3- introduce vocabulary words and Step 4- introduce context clues (Lesaux et al. 2010).

This intervention strategy is very intensive and needs a long time to implement. The study

performed by Lesaux et al. was done over 18 weeks.

One of the major problems with teaching vocabulary to students is that there are many

vocabulary strategies that exist to tell us how to teach vocabulary. What lacks is the information

on what words are important to teach to our students (Graves et al., 2013). Graves et al. (2013)

suggest using the SWIT technique when teaching vocabulary. This is where the teacher chooses

between 3 different intervention strategy techniques: 1.) Powerful Instruction for specific,

complex words, 2.) Brief Explanations for words with clear definitions or 3.) Infer Meanings

intended for students to use context or morphological clues to decipher the words. Teaching

content specific vocabulary becomes the focus of many studies, including this one as well.

According to research, content specific vocabulary knowledge affects and predicts student’s

overall academic success (Beach et al. 2015). Throughout my research I discovered that many

vocabulary intervention strategies, no matter how different they were, followed a similar

ideology; immerse the students with the words. Whether teaching vocabulary to student on

level, below, students with learning disabilities or ELLs, many of the learning strategies followed

the steps of immersing the students with the language. For teaching students’ content specific
words, I found a strategy that would be most useful for this study. As Beach et al. (2015) tells us,

about 10% of the words in content area texts and 1.4% of the words in common texts are Tier 2

words, it is imperative to focus on these words when teaching vocabulary. As teachers we must

teach words explicitly and systematically to make sure all students can increase their reading

comprehension. The technique that Beach et al. (2015) provides is a vocabulary intervention

strategy that is designed for students with learning disabilities, but I found it useful for this

study. Step 1- Select four Tier 2 words each week. Step 2- Introduce words and provide student-

friendly definitions. Step 3- Facilitate discussion of the meaning of the word. Step 4- Engage

students in word play. Step 5- Provide scaffolded writing opportunities. (Beach et al. 2015).

Executing the Plan

As I reported earlier the plan for this study had changed mid-way through the

observation period. The two students that I was going to use for the study changed schools and

I was left scrambling to figure out a new path. During the project that the students were

working on, I noticed that a lot of them were doing research and googling what some of the

words meant because they had never heard of them. When I the plan changed and I started to

work with Samantha, it became clear that she was not only struggling with reading but

struggling mightily with vocabulary as well. I decided to try and help her with vocabulary

intervention strategies because she was lacking the skills and knowledge to figure out the words

without using Google and even then, she was just reading a definition and not truly

understanding the word or what she was reading. The project the students were working on

was an ethnographic study of the Bronx, New York. The students were tasked with being
assigned a district, researching information on that district, going on a field trip to their assigned

districts and culminating in a group PowerPoint presentation to share with the class. On

March 26th I met with Samantha in the 10-minute period before the start of class to introduce

her to the semantic word map strategy. Using her project assignment sheet, I had her highlight

words that she did not know the meanings of. The term that Samantha highlighted was

“discretionary funds”. I decided that I would use the semantic word map strategy with her on

this term. Samantha wrote the word in her notebook and drew the circle around it. I told her to

make a connection for everything she thought the term could mean. Samantha just stared at

me and said, “I have no clue mister”. I then decided to break the term apart and help her

decipher it that way. I drew a line in between discretionary and funds and told her to build off of

one of the words. She was immediately drawn to the word funds. She wrote things like money,

bank and allowance. When I asked her if she knew what the word funds was, she said yes and

explained it to me. I then asked about the word discretionary and she had no idea. I tried to

help her break the word down, asking if she knew what discretion was, she still said “no idea”. I

could tell Samantha was getting frustrated, so I let her continue her research without

interrupting her again. I told her if she came across any more words to let me know and I would

help her. The rest of this day, she did not speak to me, I could tell she was frustrated. Before I

left, I asked her to try the semantic word map for the rest of the week on words she did not

understand, and we will go over it next week.

*Semantic Word Map. Figure 1*

On April 2nd I came in the 10 minutes before the class started to meet with Samantha

again. She came in and we started talking about her use of the semantic word map. She said she
did not try it because the class was going too fast for her to stop and write everything out. I told

her that we were going to try a different vocabulary model today. I introduced Samantha to the

Frayer model. I taught Samantha to construct the box that the Frayer model exists in. This week

we chose the “caucus”. Samantha said she came across this word when she was doing her

research on District 11 but had no idea what it meant. I asked her if she Googled the meaning

and she said “yes, but I still don’t know what it means”. The Frayer model was a complete

disaster. Samantha hated it from the beginning. She felt that the semantic word map was too

time consuming and this was just a complete disaster. She completely shut down and told me

she did not want to do this anymore. I asked her to try it out when she got home, that way she

had more time to practice and we could go over it the next time I was there. She agreed to try it

at home, with the word caucus and she would show me the following meeting.

*Frayer Model. Figure 2*

April 16th was the last time I was going to work with Samantha. I came in the 10 minutes

early and she was there. I asked how she did with the Frayer model strategy, and she said, “not

good mister”. Samantha told me that there was too much work to do for it and she was too

confused when I was not there to help her work through it. I was shocked. I did not know what

to do. I planned on Samantha choosing one of the models we worked on and using that model

the rest of the year. Unfortunately, she did not like the models and did not want to use them at

all. I remembered the model used by Beach et al. from my research and thought that maybe it

would work. Instead of asking Samantha to do so much work, perhaps I needed to do a little

more modeling and assistance. This model was created for student with learning disabilities so

perhaps Samantha would find it easier to implement. Full disclosure, I do not know if Samantha
has a learning disability or an IEP, I did not ask the cooperating teacher that information. I

worked with Samantha for that 10 minutes, introducing her to the new model. The word she

came across to use was “constituents”. This was the perfect word to use for this model. The

word was not too difficult and there were many common places that she could have heard it or

hear it in the future. I moved on to step 2 which is to explain and provide the definition to the

word. I told her that a constituent is someone who lives in the district and votes for the council

member. I gave her the synonym for constituent, which was voter. The student friendly

explanation was “To become a constituent, I must vote and become part of something”. Step 3

was providing a common phrase where she would see it. I then gave her a common phrase

where she would hear that word. I said “I am running for re-election to District 11. I am here to

give a speech to you, my constituents”. To get into step 4, engage in wordplay, I asked her some

yes or no questions that were asking if it described a constituent. The questions were as follows:

1. I just turned 17 years old and the Presidential Election is next month.

2. I am 52 years old and I went to a Presidential fundraiser yesterday.

3. When I grow up, I want to be President.

4. I just voted for the Democratic Council Person for District 11.

Samantha’s answers were:

1. Yes (incorrect)

2. Yes (correct)

3. No (correct)

4. Yes (correct)
Samantha thought that she could vote at 17 and did not know you had to be 18 to vote. That

does not mean she did not know what a constituent is, she got the other 3 questions correct.

The final step is to provide scaffolded writing opportunities. I tasked Samantha with adding a

slide to her presentation where she talked about constituents in the District she was assigned

to. She told her other group members that she wanted to create a slide where it talked about

the constituents of District 11 and they agreed to let her do it. Part of the ethnography project

was to interview people who lived and worked in the district, so she was already assigned this,

but now she knew what a constituent is. I asked Samantha how she liked this activity we did.

She said it was so much better than the other 2 things. The semantic word map and the Frayer

model were too much work for her to focus on the class and the strategies at the same time. By

me implementing the Tier 2-word strategy she was able to know what the word meant because

I provided her with multiple definitions and easy definitions.

Limitations

There are many limitations with this study. There is only 1 participant in the study;

Samantha. The study was only conducted 1 period a week over a 3-week span and would need

to be implemented over several periods and weeks to properly gauge the effects of this

vocabulary intervention strategy. Although Samantha had great attendance for this study, the

original plan was to have two other students participate. Because they changed schools the plan

needed to be readjusted, thus limiting my time to conduct a thorough study.

Conclusion
 Without proper vocabulary intervention strategies students will continue to have

reading comprehension difficulties. This is true for all students, not just ones that are ELLs or

have learning disabilities. It is from m research and this study that I noticed that vocabulary

strategies that are design for LD and ELL students are effective for any student. Through my

research and this study, I believe that not every vocabulary intervention strategy will work for

any student but there is one that will. For Samantha the semantic word map and the Frayer

model were too intense for her. The modified Tier 2 model worked. I will be visiting Samantha

one more time to see how she is doing with her vocabulary and if she has tried any other ways

to improve her vocabulary. Further study is necessary to see the proper effects of the Tier 2

vocabulary intervention strategy. More students and more time are needed to get a proper

quantitative result. For the sake of this study, the result was qualitative. Samantha’s positive

response to the Tier 2-word method compared to the semantic word map and Frayer models

was sufficient proof that a vocabulary intervention strategy will work.

Figure 1
Figure 2
 Bibliography

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