Rare-word density distinguished children in general classrooms from those in gifted classrooms. Correlational analysis determined the relationship between dialect variation and rare vocabulary production.įindings indicated that tallies of rare-word types were higher in fictional narratives, whereas rare-word density-a measure that controls for narrative length-was greater in personal narratives.
The authors used t tests and logistic regressions to explore classroom- and narrative-type differences in rare vocabulary production. The Wordlist for Expressive Rare Vocabulary Evaluation (Mahurin-Smith, DeThorne, & Petrill, 2015) was used to tally number and type of uncommon words produced in these narratives. The purpose of this study was to examine rare vocabulary produced in the spoken narratives of school-age African American children.įorty-three children from general and gifted classrooms produced 2 narratives: a personal story and a fictional story that was based on the wordless book Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). Further, this study demonstrates that explicit and supplemental handwriting and spelling instruction can play an important role in teaching writing to young children who acquire text transcription skills more slowly than their peers. These findings provide partial support for the theoretical proposition that text transcription skills are causally related to writing.
The treatment condition also resulted in greater gains in sentence construction fluency and composition vocabulary, but did not statistically enhance composition length or composition quality. In comparison to students in the phonological awareness control condition, students who received supplemental handwriting and spelling instruction made greater gains in handwriting fluency, handwriting legibility, and spelling accuracy. The treatment condition was designed to improve children’s handwriting fluency, handwriting legibility, spelling accuracy, and knowledge of spelling patterns. Students in each condition received 16 h of one-on-one instruction. Thirty students (16 boys, 14 girls) were randomly assigned to a handwriting and spelling instructional condition or a phonological awareness instructional control condition. The impact of supplemental handwriting and spelling instruction on learning to write was examined in an experimental study with first grade students who were not acquiring these skills as rapidly as their classmates. High correlations between student engagement in knowledge building and vocabulary growth suggest that productive vocabulary can be developed through sustained knowledge building in subject areas. Domain-specific and academic words were correlated with depth of understanding. In a Grade 4 inquiry, students incorporated almost all the domain-specific terms at and below their current grade level, and most of those expected for upper grade levels (5–8) based on the curriculum guidelines. Analysis of lexical frequency profiles indicated significant growth in productive written vocabulary, including academic words. It is the communal space where knowledge work–ideas, reference material, results of experiments, and so forth–is entered and continually improved. The vocabulary growth of 22 students over Grades 3 and 4 was traced, based on their entries to Knowledge Forum-a knowledge building environment used as an integral part of classroom work. In the research reported in this article, students were engaged in sustained collaborative knowledge building in science and social studies. Productive knowledge work and high-level literacy are essential for engagement in a Knowledge society.
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