Entry#6 Teaching Vocabulary through Categories

PODCAST: VOL Teaching Vocabulary through Categories with Dr. Neuman

http://www.voiceofliteracy.org/posts/44046

After listening to the Podcast of interviewing Dr. Neuman, I am informed of the importance of vocabulary development for emergent literacy learners. Dr. Neuman first got to study teaching vocabulary in preschool and elementary schools when she became aware of the what the vocabulary gap between normal children and children at risk means to children at risk in the future schooling. When doing survey in 55 schools in the states, Dr. Neuman found that 0% of them have planned lessons in vocabulary development because the teachers believes that the vocabulary can be covered in regular reading or other lessons, however, the embedded learning does not work well for the preschoolers or first graders.

With the thought of changing the odds of success for preschool children at risk later on, she advocates teaching vocabulary early on in classroom through understandable categories. By vocabulary categories, she means the conceptual frameworks of words such at fruit, weather, animals, and so on. The WoW(world of word) strategy also includes embedded multimedia such as videos and audios to teach vocabulary categories. This way the learners can both hear and see the words they learned, which make it more understandable and memorable.

Dr. Neuman strongly suggests that preschool and elementary teachers should place more focus exclusively on vocabulary development early on, and more planned lessons in vocabulary development should be arranged as the vocabulary needs to be repeated and reminded to children.

Question: in the podcast Dr. Neuman spent some time discussing that oral vocabulary is the foundation of early literacy development instead of print vocabulary. I am confused why she emphasized this point,also, what is the difference between oral and print vocabulary teaching?

Original article: http://www.umich.edu/~rdytolrn/pdf/rtl1122109.pdf

Other resources regards vocabulary education: http://www.teachpreschool.org/2009/10/building-a-childs-vocabulary-in-preschool/