This past week I had the opportunity to observe a 1st grade teacher named Ashley Read, who I had the opportunity to get to know in my Valor class this summer. I was impressed by her intentional use of vocabulary with her students. For example, “What does being present look like?” and “I will wait until everyone is present until I begin.” Obviously, she has taught her students that “present” means being attentive. What a positive, up-beat way to remind students to be on task WITHOUT saying it in a negative way! This made me start thinking, in general, how important it is that EVERY SINGLE WORD we say to ANYONE needs to be intentional, because it IMPACTS our relationship with them.
Likewise, our ACADEMIC vocabulary is even more important. There is a great resource called “lead4ward” that we will be working with in PLC's this year. You will find a comprehensive menu of all grade levels by clicking here. Note that there is an ACADEMIC VOCABULARY section for each subject listed for each grade level. This section provides a list of the academic vocabulary that is included in K-5 grade level TEKS, and which is also used in STAAR assessments. We can help support our students’ success by assuring we are using the correct academic vocabulary that our students will be held accountable for. So often, our students may fully understand the concepts they are being tested on, but academic vocabulary that they are not familiar with can get them off track!
I hope you will take the time to review the academic vocabulary for the content areas you teach in all grades, K-5. When we intentionally teach the vocabulary to our students and then hold high expectations for them to learn and utilize the correct vocabulary themselves, we are working together as a campus team to ensure success for ALL students!
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