Vocabulary During Phonics

Carla Stanford: Let's talk about vocabulary and how vocabulary can be an integral, intentional part of the phonics lesson. So thinking about the simple view of reading, we have word recognition times language comprehension, and it gives us skilled reading comprehension. The phonics lesson is really living in the word recognition section. However, we know when kids are decoding and reading words, we constantly want them to be thinking about meaning and use. And so in order to make sure that connection is happening, we can intentionally select our words for our phonics lesson that will give us an opportunity to talk about synonyms and antonyms. Talk about how words are related to one another. How words have multiple meanings and can be used as nouns or verbs even though they're the same word. So just considering word selection related to the phonics pattern and how we can also talk about vocabulary all along the way is really important. When you're planning and you select your words, so for instance, if we're selecting our words for '-ck' spelling pattern, we could think through all the words we want to use for the week and go back through and intentionally think about which words could I talk about with my children that would open up some rich conversation to develop their knowledge of the word. So for instance, the word thick. It's a word that's very nuanced. We use it in specific situations like thick crust pizza or a very thick chapter book, kids like to say. Maybe a thick sauce. We may say the weather feels really thick. And if we're doing a weather unit, that's a really nice conversation to have to describe the humidity in the air. And thick also has an anonym or an opposite, which would be thin. So we can have thin crust pizza, or we can have thick crust pizza. We hear we have an opposite.

And usually families are really divided on that, and everyone has their favorite. Another word that would be nice to choose is the word quick. Quick is a great word to use during your '-ck' work because your kids have to practice the /kw/ sound with Q-U. But also you can talk about what are some other words that mean the same as quick? Fast. So having these conversations saying, read over your words. Find a word that means the same as fast. It really gives kids an opportunity to think about words and think about their meaning. Another example is the word duck. Duck is a great word because it can be a noun, meaning a bird that likes to swim and quack, or it can mean duck like to get down and cover your head. To duck. Like, I'm going to duck if the ball is coming toward me and I'm not ready to catch it.

Or I may duck and cover if I am preparing for an earthquake. So duck can be a noun, a namer, a who or what. And duck can also be a verb, an action A did what. This is really great to have this conversation with children because they read the word duck and they spell the word duck, but really thinking about the meaning and the use. Because all of a sudden you can say the duck and kids know it's a namer, but you can say, ducked under, and they know that it is an action. A did what. So you're really beginning to build in not just the meaning of the word, but the use of the word, which is really important. So we're not siloing our phonics from our language comprehension. We're pulling them together. Another great example is to use the word flock. And you could say a flock of ducks.

A flock describes a group of ducks. That's a great word, a love to talk about groups of animals. And when you can introduce that, certain groups of animals have specific names. And here for flock, it fits with the '-ck' rule. It goes with duck. And it is a great opportunity to put the way we talk about a group of ducks out there in front of kids while you're teaching phonics. Starting at the top, at the listening game, you can introduce a word. You could say, my word is duck. Let's listen. /d/, /ŭ/, /k/. Our vowel is /ŭ/. Duck. A duck can be an animal that swims or I can duck and cover. Immediately, when you use that word duck, you can give the quick two definitions and move on. Come back to it again. When you introduce the word, giving more information, letting kids have a time to interact with it.

And then what can happen — as you've intentionally built your vocabulary by selecting words that give you multiple meanings, nuance, definitions, different uses — then you can build that into your phrases like a flock of ducks and your sentences. So for instance, you could build a group of sentences for your sentence dictation that says, the flock of ducks swam in the pond. All of those words are decodable for kids that are doing the '-ck' rule. Your next sentence could be, the duck's duck to get a snack. So then you get both meanings of duck in the same sentence. And then you could say, they swam to the dock and you could use they, if you've taught them that trick word or heart word, you could use they as a pronoun referring back to ducks. And you have a lot of important language comprehension work and vocabulary work that you've built into your phonics and you're not siloing. You're saying to your kids, yes, you're learning how to decode, but the whole goal of learning how to decode is so that you can think about the words and build meaning. So vocabulary throughout the entire lesson is really important. And then at the end of the lesson, after you've done phrases and sentences, you can go back and read them all and you can play a game where you ask them to be word detectives. Let's read back what we wrote, because we always are going to read back what we wrote, and we are going to now find a word that I describe and I could say, okay, I'm thinking of a word. And it has two meanings. One of the meanings is a namer, and it is an animal that swims. The other meaning means to get down to hide from maybe?

And the kids could find the word duck. You could have them turn and talk, use it in a sentence, talk about when they've seen a duck, or talk about when they've had to duck. So this is just an example of how you can embed vocabulary. One last thought is you can take whatever you're learning in math, social studies, science, any other part of the day. Really think about what words are your kids encountering and what do they need access to? Look over your list of phonics words, all the phonics content you've covered so far, and what words can you intentionally build in to ensure that kids are accurate and automatic with reading and spelling and considering how the word is used in the meaning. So for instance, if you are in math and you're learning about telling time, you could use the word clock in your dictation. If you are talking about weather, you could talk about, when it is 60 degrees outside would I choose a thick jacket or maybe a thin sweater? So taking your social studies and science content and really thinking about how you can embed and use that in your phonics time will give kids this understanding that this work in phonics is in service of making meaning outside of this time.

Narrator: Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim and Donna Barksdale; the Hastings/Quillin Fund an advised Fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation; the AFT; the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation; and anonymous donors.