Writing Definitions and Responding to Sentence Prompts
Texas. Both sections were heterogeneously mixed groups, each containing three special education students and overall representing a range of reading abilities. All participants had the same teacher for reading. Twenty-three students in one section self-selected the words while 21 students in the other section continued with the regular vocabulary program. Students who self-selected words engaged in specific word learning activities related to the word wall. They participated Replica Tag Heuer in small-group and whole-class activities, including research-based instructional practices that highlighted multiple exposures to meaningful contexts beyond word definitions. Students in the regular vocabulary instruction section engaged in word learning activities taken from a commercial vocabulary workbook.
For six weeks, we collected and analyzed both qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative sources were (a) preinterviews with both classes about word walls using an adaptation of Hoffman and Sailors’s (2004) TEXIN-3 assessment tool for evaluating classroom literacy environments and postinterviews with only the word wall group, (b) artifacts from activities, and (c) field notes and audiotaped interactions between teacher and students and among students in small groups. We systematically read and coded the data into agreed-upon categories. Quantitative data sources included the vocabulary portion of the Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE; AGS Group Assessments, 2001) that was administered as a pretest to both groups and the assessment results from six teacher-developed weekly tests. The weekly assessments included writing word definitions and responding Tag Heuer Carrera Replica Watches to sentence prompts. For example, one definition prompt was “Define hospitable” while the meaningful-use sentence prompt directed students to “List one thing that shows someone being hospitable.” During this six-week time period, each group worked with different sets of words except for the last set.
To compare the different instructional frameworks, for the last round both groups worked with words selected by the teacher from the vocabulary workbook. Two weeks after the six-week intervention ended, the teacher gave both classes a delayed test over the last set of words studied by both groups. The test was in the same format as previous tests—writing definitions and responding to sentence prompts. The teacher did not warn the students about the delayed test. We used the results of simple main effects analysis on the two delayed tests to determine if there were differences in what each group retained.
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