Selecting Words for Instruction During Primary Read-alouds

Reading aloud to children is commonly accepted as a means of building vocabulary, particularly with emergent and beginning readers (Biemiller & Boote, 2006) and is a recommended practice in early childhood classrooms (International Reading Association [IRA] & the National Association for the Education of Young Children [NAEYC], 1998). Although there is a preponderance of empirical research findings supporting vocabulary development during read-alouds (e.g., Biemiller & Boote, 2006; Justice, Meier, & Walpole, 2005; Senechal, 1997; Wasik & Blewitt, 2006), little is known about how practitioners have incorporated this knowledge base into their practices and whether vocabulary instruction is actually improving (Baumann, Kame'enui, & Ash, 2003) for the children in greatest need of support.This exploratory study builds on the existing research in the field by examining the words selected for instruction during read-alouds by four primary teachers along with the rationale for their choices. While there were many points of convergence between the literature and the teachers' practices, there were also significant discrepancies between published guidelines, observed instruction, and the teachers' own perceptions of their practice. Exploring such discrepancies between research and practice provides the foundation for meaningful, relevant research in the future with implications for practice and pre-service teacher education.Perspectives on Word SelectionDetermining which words in a particular text to target for instruction requires considerable thought (Vukelich & Christie, 2009), and teachers need to have "a principled basis for identifying the words that should be targeted for vocabulary instruction" (Nagy & Hiebert, 2011, p. 388). Research continues in the field, but a theory to guide word selection does not exist at this time (Nagy & Hiebert, 2011). What we do have are general guidelines that support teachers in making critical instructional decisions.In the most recent volume of the Handbook of Reading Research, Nagy and Hiebert (2011) identified four factors that impact word selection. First, teachers should consider the word's role in language. Does it appear frequently? Does it appear in many kinds of texts, or only in certain content areas? Secondly, teachers should consider how the word relates to other words semantically and morphologically. Teachers should also consider the students' current knowledge about the word as well as its conceptual difficulty. The final factor is more pragmatic and suggests that teachers consider the word's role in the lesson, the particular text being read, and in the curriculum as a whole.Many articles and professional resources have been published to guide the selection of words for vocabulary instruction, authored by some of the leading researchers in the field including Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown, Linda Kucan, Michael Graves, and Andrew Biemiller. The guidelines are general in order to be applicable to a variety of instructional contexts. Factors that influence word selection typically include utility, relevance, and concept load. These factors might be framed within the following questions to guide teachers in the decision-making process:* Is understanding the word important to understanding the selection in which it appears? * Are students able to use context or structural analysis skills to discover the word's meaning? * Can working with this word be useful in furthering students' context, structural-analysis, or dictionary skills? * How useful is this word outside the reading selection currently being taught? (Graves, 2006, p. 68). Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002) recommended similar criteria. Words selected for instruction should have importance and utility. Words might be selected based on instructional potential, such as introducing a specific morpheme. Finally, words that are somewhat familiar to the students but require further conceptual development are recommended. …