--construction in his reading classes, back in 2008, after being trained very intensively via the National Star Reading Program. Some of you might remember that. He further intensified and honed in and built upon his vocabulary instructional practices as a participant-- and then later on went on to be an instructional lead and facilitator for CALPRO's evidence-based reading instruction EBRI Institute.

He admits that his favorite reading component to teach is vocabulary, so he's the perfect person to have on this webinar. He enjoys the challenge of making complex, abstract words accessible to his native students and English-language learners from the ESL program. And more importantly, he enjoys empowering his students with effective vocabulary instruction, and has witnessed firsthand how they have improved and benefited from it in their everyday lives.

He's looking forward to sharing his professionary vocabulary insights with you today. I see we have quite a few representatives that are from K-12 district adult schools, along with community colleges. Welcome to our CDOs and library people-- glad to have you guys on too. Looks like we are about mostly teachers here-- three administrators and one support staff person. Welcome, everyone.

So now that we know who's going to be presenting to us today-- and I forgot to mention, I'm Sudie Whalen. I work on the TAP Project, on the professional development branch, with AIR. And I'm going to go ahead and turn us over to Dr. Terry Salinger And she's going to talk to us about the research behind vocabulary instruction, before Guillermo talks to us a little bit about the practical application of this research.

All right. Thank you, Sudie. I'm so, so happy to be here. This is really exciting. Thank you all for calling in. I am going to talk about the research. And it's interesting.

So the 2016 National Academy Report On Adult Education depends on research on younger learners in its discussion of adult vocabulary development. Fortunately, there's ample research on adolescent struggling readers and ways to help them gain vocabulary.

Let's start with the Hart and Risley work, which some of you may know, about the foundation-- it's foundational, in that these researchers found what they called meaningful differences in the number of words that young children-- preschoolers-- hear prior to school entry, and that this depends on the socioeconomic status of their families.

Children from low-income families arrive at kindergarten having heard on average 32 million fewer words than children from professional families. The sheer number of words youngsters have heard influences their readiness for beginning reading and for learning what is a new language of school. Many of these children also have fewer experiences listening to and talking about books.

This sparseness of experience can continue to hurt them. Research in the K-12 world has also, unfortunately, documented that really productive vocabulary instruction doesn't take place at any grade. But this is what we know-- vocabulary growth is developmental, because living life teaches vocabulary. So regardless of their literacy levels, adult learners have more advanced vocabulary than children at the same reading level. So an adult reading at the fifth-grade level has more words that he or she knows than a fifth grader.

However, as reading requirements become more sophisticated, moving into the higher levels of complexity, printed language becomes more and more important as the primary way by which adults deepen their vocabulary knowledge. Skilled readers learn the majority of new words from the context of their reading, not from a dictionary.

In fact, research has shown that successful comprehension of a text requires that readers be familiar with as little as 90% of the words in the text, leaving the remaining words to be learned or figured out more or less organically, without the need for external assistance, like a dictionary. This suggests that the best vocabulary instruction teaches strategies for figuring out word meanings, rather than teaching word meanings per se. So this is pretty exciting, because it really precludes the sort of information that Guillermo is going to be showing.

Now this last one. Research also suggests that learning vocabulary involves mastering an unconstrained set of skills. I'm bringing this up because I think it's really interesting to think about how constrained skills differ from unconstrained skills. It is far easier to teach constrained literacy related skills, like learning to decode and mastering sounds and recognizing the number of letters in the alphabet, because there are established lesson plans, at all levels. There are assessment routines. And teachers learn strategies for identifying when students aren't learning and for re-teaching as needed.

But vocabulary acquisition is unconstrained. It's not so easy to teach in a dynamic way that is respectful of the vocabulary knowledge adults bring to the learning environment. Adults, especially those who struggle with reading, have to feel confident to do a lot of the work themselves, if they are going to reach a lexicon of 75,000 words. This is 12th-grade vocabulary. That's the vocabulary for the GED. But teacher can help by expanding the strategies they use to learn new words. They can help by being real coaches for vocabulary learning.

Now I want to show you a slide that demonstrates one sort of way to teach adults new vocabulary. I found this on the web and I wanted to share it, so we can talk about and think about what's wrong with it. If you take a look at column one, these words should be familiar if you have a background in, say, English or rhetoric or linguistics. If not, they may ring a bell in your deepest memory, but they are not words you use every day-- and that's the point.

The phrases in column two are ones I made up by putting together some of these words. I thought they'd give you more sense about the words on this list. They're the kind of pedantic gobbledygook that good editors would try to change to more common words.

And-- the point here is that they illustrate-- or I hope they illustrate the kinds of phrases that adult learners may encounter in what they read in their classes-- because they are high-level words. They seem like gobbledygook. And as such, they can contribute to the negative attitudes toward reading in general that adult learners may have, and the attitudes they have about themselves as readers. This is not how adults of any reading level actually acquire new vocabulary, but it does give us an opportunity to get back to the evidence from the research.

These three contexts for adult vocabulary comprehension learning and use are quite straightforward. They're common sense, especially the societal context for learning and using vocabulary. In adult-education classes, learners often have to dig deep into their memories for the content-m specific meanings of words teachers are using, as they move into this educational context.

Research has shown-- and this is very interesting, provocative research-- that adult learners often grapple with mathematics, in part because of the unique ways math sometimes uses common, everyday terms in precise, math-specific ways. The learners, who may be somewhat phobic about math to begin with, don't understand what teachers are saying and don't understand what word problems are asking.

Teachers must help learners pay attention to the way language is used in math texts and in problems, so that the learners move away from informal, everyday ways of talking about mathematical concepts like quantification and length and money, to use more technical and precise meanings that they can associate with the more abstract mathematical operations they're trying to master.

Now, vocational context is another one that's important for adults. And it provides a means for increasing their storehouse of words. But here we've got instructors, supervisors, and others in a teaching role having to take on a really new responsibility. And that is ensuring that they communicate the meaning of all these terms as part of the learning process.

I think about the training for, as an example, car mechanics. There is so much vocabulary that the mechanic where I take my car uses that I have no idea what he's saying. But he knows what he's saying. And if he were teaching an apprentice, he would have to communicate that vocabulary.

So there are some evidence-based, research-based strategies for vocabulary growth and for increasing vocabulary growth. And these two major bullets represent how adults in general learn to increase and strengthen their vocabularies.

In class, real participatory, nonjudgmental discussions are great, and they can be on academic or more civic social topics, so long as learners feel engaged and safe. That feeling engaged and safe involves questioning their fellow students and their teacher, learning to really understand the concepts behind what people are saying.

Writing-- again, not evaluated for grammar and punctuation, et cetera, et cetera. But writing also encourages the adult learners to explore and learn new vocabulary. This is not to devalue direct teaching of new words and their meanings. It's valuable. It can be extremely valuable, as content-area teachers use this as a precursor to introducing a new unit.

But it's also important-- and this is really my main point-- that teachers model strategies for learning new words through their own scaffolding and their own thinking aloud. This approach models for adult learners how experienced readers figure out unfamiliar words.

And perhaps the most important strategy that teachers have to model is the use of context clues-- really broadly defined-- not just those words surrounding an unfamiliar word, but the sentences in the paragraph in which they appear. Teachers also may need to instruct their adult learners in textual aides and books, like glossaries-- how to use morphology those smaller parts of words as a way to figure out the rough meanings of words, or words in the same family, or to determine parts of speech. And teachers may have to really give positive instruction on how to use the web to find out the meanings of new words.

Now I want to switch from actual instruction that is evidence based to some of the other aspects about learning vocabulary. Teacher scaffolding of vocabulary words-- word-identification strategies, like rereading, looking at context, or using textual support, demonstrates to adult learners that even expert readers don't automatically know the meaning of all the words they read.

If any of you are familiar with the work that has been done by Cindy Greenleaf on academic apprenticeships, you understand what this is all about. When I adult learners understand that skilled readers actively think about what they are reading and whether it actually makes sense-- and when they realized that skilled readers actively try to figure out how to tackle reading challenges-- then these adult learners gain a set of skills and strategies to use in their own reading. The term for this is metacognition, or thinking about the meaning that they're making. And its importance in learning vocabulary and in becoming a strong leader should not be underestimated.

I've talked to adult learners who've said that the most valuable skills that they've learned in their reading in social studies and science and math classes is what their teachers actually do as they read and try to construct meaning-- sort of giving them insight into the secrets of being an expert reader.

Another factor in vocabulary growth is really attitudinal. And this relates to metacognition and to the active monitoring of comprehension down to the word level Carol Dweck's research on growth and fixed mindsets has been popularized to the point where it's almost a cliche. But it's based on really, really solid, solid research.

And it's important, because it really means that individuals can develop what has been called a maladaptive attribution-- that's not really gobbledygook-- through which then they push off responsibility for their academic struggles onto environmental factors, onto other people, or onto their own self-perceived inadequacy. They say things like, books always have words that are too big, and that's why I can't read. That teacher uses words that are just too hard and doesn't explain them. Or the common one-- I never was good at reading or math or science, and I never will be.

Such behaviors can make learners at almost any age give up. And in reading it makes them give up, rather than launching a set of dependable strategies for word ID and for deeper comprehension. The best teachers demonstrate how learners can learn the secrets that experts use. The best teachers let learners in on the fact that even expert readers don't know all the words they encounter when they read.

And then here's a final comment, which is pretty self evident, unless you're an adult learner who may be feeling a little insecure. The extensive work on mindsets or maladaptive behaviors highlights the extent to which struggling learners of any age, in any academic or non-academic context, are often reluctant to ask for help. Sometimes that reluctance comes from the fact that they've experienced the horrible phenomenon of sitting in the back waving their hands, and their teacher doesn't respond to them. Or if the teacher responds, it's in a dismissive way.

Teachers can help learners overcome this tendency, by creating environments in which learning is active, engaging. It's a collaborative process. Psychological research says this is facilitating, quote, "attributional retraining." It's an interesting concept-- really retraining people to think about how they view themselves as learners, and especially readers. In other words, it means being really strong, empathetic teachers.

The next slide gives you a sense of some of the resources that I used to prepare this presentation. And I am delighted to dig into these. So Sudie, back to you.

Thank you so much, Terry, for sharing your insights. We appreciate you. And if you guys have any questions for Terry, there will be some Q&A time towards the end of the webinar. And so at this point, we're going to go ahead and pass this over to Guillermo. And he's going to talk to us about the instructional side of things-- how we tie that research to practice.

Thank you, Sudie, and thank you, Terry. And thank you, everybody, for being here-- appreciate it. Let's see-- this information you may already know, but it bears repeating. As you may have already experienced, students who are unfamiliar with the meaning of words of the text they read have trouble comprehending. So vocabulary is important, because it helps to determine whether or not a student comprehends what he or she is reading.

The ultimate goals of vocabulary instruction are to help students improve and attain comprehension of what they read-- or as Terry said, to help them become skilled readers-- but also to increase and master the number of word meanings students know. And when I say know, I mean they can explain the word to you, they can teach it to someone else, and use it correctly in verbal and written context.

Now before I move on, I'm curious. I'd like to pick your brain a little bit. In the chat box, could you share with us, how do you select? How do you determine the vocabulary words for your instruction? Where do you get the words from? How do you choose the words? How do you determine what words you're going to teach? If you could just let us know in the chat box, that'd be great. It will give me a good idea of what you guys are doing. AWL.

Denise, what is AWL, for the group? Academic word list. OK, that's what I thought. Thank you. Life skills, OK. OK, good. Life skills, based on the unit, the academic word lists. Great. OK. Sometimes you take it from the actual reading. OK. Based on the unit being taught that day. OK.

All right. Based on the lesson in the reading. OK, so it looks like from the academic word list, from life skills, based on the unit you guys are working on, based on the reading you're working on. OK, good. That gives me a good idea.

OK, a couple of people are still typing. Informal conversations about many topics in class. Thank you. Supplemental readers. Great, thank you. A word bank. OK. Thank you guys I appreciate that.

Now back in 2008, I was trained intensively on delivering effective vocabulary instruction using the high-frequency academic words. And I've been doing so ever since. In my ABE reading classes, which is made up of some native speakers, but the majority are English-language learners that came from ESL, my primary focus has been on teaching these high-frequency academic words. And these are abstract words that are found in a variety of content areas. And these words are frequently found in written language, across a variety of academic areas.

And as some of you may already know, there are thousands of high-frequency words. You can easily find a list of these words on Google. But I want to stress to you all that I focus on these high-frequency academic words because, again, they occur more frequently in the written language across a variety of academic areas. So you get the most bang for your buck teaching these words is the way I see it.

Now, every student that enrolls in my class needs vocabulary instruction. And hopefully you can relate to that, as well. The best way I have been trained in the past to go about teaching these high-frequency vocabulary words is by using the steps of direct explicit instruction. In other circles this is also referred to as the gradual release of responsibility model. To me, it's just effective teaching.

First off, always explicitly tell of students what they are doing and why. In the modeling, I introduce the high-m frequency words by explaining the word via personal examples. Instead of just giving them a definition, I give students several personal examples in different contexts. And I use language that's easy for students to understand.

Lastly, I use prompts to elicit examples from students. And I'll show you an example of what I mean, shortly. Now in the guided practice, students are given several opportunities to practice the words in varied contexts. I was trained to develop and use a variety of generative activities, that allow students to work with the new words using a higher-order critical thinking skills.

In the independent practice, students are given an opportunity to apply what they've learned. Now at this point, after several guided practices, ideally, students should be knowledgeable and competent enough to generate their own sentences in writing and properly use the words in conversations and discussions.

And of course, throughout the whole lesson, I monitor continually, to make sure students are using the words correctly. And I give more examples as needed. As Terry mentioned earlier in one of her slides, adult learners respond to direct instruction. And I can verify that. I can confirm that, Terry. So thank you for that.

I'd like to hear from you one more time before I continue. And I want to know, what are you guys currently doing in the classroom? On the left, please tell me what parts of direct, explicit instruction are you currently using when teaching these vocabulary words? And can I go back to the model?

So in question one, what parts of direct, explicit instruction are you currently using when teaching vocabulary words? And in question two, what kind of activities do you use in your instruction to reinforce the vocabulary words you teach? It'll be interesting to see what you guys are all doing. Good. Definition, then context modeling. Great.

If you guys could please use the chat pods on the right, so we know which question you're responding to, that would be great. Use the chat pod where it says Q1 and Q2.

Thank you, Sudie. So yes, modeling is very important. I know Terry mentioned that earlier. Good-- picture work-- great.

Students-- great. The application is important. And as you're typing, this is direct, explicit instruction. And it's also known as the gradual release of responsibility model. But, to me, it's just effective teaching. Let's see.

Good-- guided practice using a variety of resources. The more practice they have, the stronger they'll be once they get to the independent practice. Good. OK. You guys are busy in your classrooms with vocabulary instruction. That's great.

Assessing the student-- learning using closed Good. Yeah, every activity informs your instruction. The results of every activity informs your instruction. OK, good. Small groups-- pictures-- create dialogue-- great. Modeling and guided practice.

Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for this information. It's good to see you guys are doing all these great things up there.

I'm going to move on in the interest of time. But keep on typing, please. As I mentioned earlier, most of the vocabulary activities I was trained to develop and use are generative. Now, generative activities are activities that require students to use their analytical and critical-thinking skills. They help to show how well, or whether or not a student understands a word. Now in a few slides, I'll show you what these generative activities look like.

Here's an overview of the sequence of activities I was trained to use when delivering the high-frequency vocabulary instruction. I'd like to walk you through each of the activities, so that you get a good idea of what a week of vocabulary instruction looks like in my classroom.

And before I do that, on the screen, I want to stress how important it is to prep. Teacher prep before delivering instruction is crucial. What you see on the screen is what I do for every word that I introduce. I think of several contexts I can use to introduce the words, as well as prompts on the right, that I use to elicit information from my students.

Now, again, in upcoming slides, I'm going to show you an example what this looks like in action. The important thing to remember is to prepare, prepare, prepare your vocabulary lesson ahead of time. Don't phone it in or wing it. The results you get from planning and preparing are well worth the time and effort you spend prepping. And if I had audio, I'd ask you, can I get an amen? But let me move on.

The first activity that students complete is the knowledge rating chart. On this chart students indicate, with a number, their knowledge of the word. And this activity identifies and elicits any prior knowledge they may have, or think they may have of the words. It gives students a place to start-- a baseline, if you will. And the idea is that if your knowledge of the word is a two prior to instruction, hopefully after instruction, it'll go up to a 4. And this activity guide forces students to be honest with themselves as to how well they know a word, or not.

Right after completing the knowledge rating chart, I distribute what I call the academic vocabulary notebook to all the students. Now as you can see on the screen, I give them the meaning. I give them the part of speech. I give them the syllabication.

I don't spend time asking students to guess, or look up the word in the dictionary. I give them all this information up front, because I want to spend more time bringing the work to life in the introduction, which is next.

Next, I begin to introduce each word. Now as I mentioned earlier, I introduce the high-frequency words-- these are all academic words, by the way-- by explaining the word via personal examples, instead of just giving them the definition. I give students several personal examples like this in different contexts.

And as you can read on the slide, I use language that's easy for students to understand. And when I'm done, I use prompts to elicit examples from students. Now in this slide and the next, you see the word being explained in two different contexts-- the word here being rationale.

If you could read the slide, hopefully you'll agree with me that I use simple language that's familiar to students. And I use the prompts. When I'm done I ask students, what is your rationale for exercising? And when responding, I make students answer in complete sentences. This prompt here served as a scaffold to help students respond in complete sentences.

I'll say, what's your rationale for exercising? And Pablo will say, part of my rationale for exercising is that-- and then he completes the sentence. And that gives me a good idea as to whether or not he understands this vocabulary word.

I do a couple of these. Here's another one, where I talk about the rationale for choosing an apartment over a house. And as you can see, I have my prompt here ready, so that my students don't have to spend too much time. And those that are shy, I already have to be ready for them to complete.

So to me the introduction is the most important part of this whole week's worth of activities, because this is really where students are introduced to the words. And this is really where you're going to show them what these words mean. Now immediately after the introduction, we complete a very quick fill-in-the-blank activity. This simple activity is a good way to end day one and tie up the vocabulary instruction for the day.

Now you can use a simple activity to formatively assess which words you will need to put more emphasis on-- and/or at the very end, you can directly ask students which words do they need more examples of. And that way you can prepare more introductions with context.

Now the next time my class meets, students complete this sentence completion. Now as you can see in this activity, this is where the generative activities kick in. In this activity, students are required to generate their own ending, in a way that makes sense. The completion of the sentence indicates to you, the teacher, how well and whether or not the student understands the word.

Now as a general rule, I use the results of all of these activities to inform my instruction. I really try to catch the mistakes and the confusion early on, to remediate. Because as you will see in the following slides, the activities get relatively harder as you progress.

The next time the class meets, the students' work on the what-do-you-think activity. Now another version of this is called yes-no-why activity. As you can see on the screen, I have two vocabulary words in each question. And this activity is more of a discussion. Students think, pair share the answers to the questions. And then we discuss answers as a class.

Now, earlier Terry mentioned discussions that are participatory and nonjudgmental. I have found that to be the case with these activities. As you can see, these questions require critical-thinking skills, and allow students to work with the words in yet another different way.

Now here there are no right or wrong answers to the questions, but the answers must be supported with logical explanation or reason. And, guys, I got to tell you, this is one of my favorite activities. It creates great discussions, but they're still participatory and nonjudgmental, Terry. It is a very fun activity. Students really get into it.

The next time the class meets, students will work on this read-and-answer activity. Now this activity is different from other activities that you may have seen. The students read a short passage and answer the question, but the vocabulary words are not in the passage.

As you can see, the vocabulary words are written in the question. Again, they're not in the passage. And student answers will demonstrate how will they understand the vocabulary words here. This is another example of using the vocabulary words in a different context. And these activities, this is what the guided practice is-- what the guided practice was referring to when I was talking about direct, explicit instruction. They have all these multiple opportunities to practice.

And then at one point we get to the final activity, where students are asked to generate their own sentences using the vocabulary words. And, again, after practicing the vocabulary in multiple guided practices using these generative activities, the hope is that students will have mastered the vocabulary words and will be able to generate sentences of their own, to demonstrate their own mastery and understanding of the word.

Now there are materials out there that have more generative activities, so it's not just these that I introduced. In the final activity, ladies and gentlemen, we go back to the knowledge rating chart. And here the student self-assess their knowledge post-instruction. And as I mentioned earlier, if their rating before instruction was a 2 or a 1, the idea is, hopefully, that the rating after instruction should be higher-- hopefully a 4.

And when I mean a 4, again, they can explain it to you well. They can teach it to somebody else, and they can use it correctly in the written responses and verbally. And that would conclude the end of a week's worth of vocabulary instruction for these five high-frequency academic words.

In this next slide, you see my vocabulary posters. To keep the words alive and always maintain a level of awareness of the words taught, I have these vocabulary posters on the walls everywhere in the classroom. There's not a space that's empty. I use the words that I teach constantly and consistently whenever I can, so thay they stay in students' awareness.

In a way the instruction never ends, because I use the words at every opportunity I have. And I also encourage students to use the words as much as possible at every opportunity they have. I'm constantly asking students if they've seen or if they've heard the words being used in their everyday lives. And I encourage them to share those examples and bring them to class.

I also encourage them to use the words whenever possible in class discussions, in writing assignments, at work, with friends, with me. Again, I basically take advantage of every opportunity I get to use the word in class, to reinforce it, bring it to life, and keep it alive in the student's awareness. And that, you guys, is what one week of vocabulary instruction looks like in my classroom. And like I said, whenever I have the opportunity to use those words, I do it. And that's it. Sudie?

Thank you, Guillermo. All right. We're now going to move on to our Q&A phase. I have a couple of questions for our presenters. And then after that, I'll open up to you guys to ask questions as well.

My first question for you, Terry. What key elements of instructors focus on regarding vocabulary instruction, that students statistically struggle with the most?

Can you hear me? I want to make sure I'm unmuted. OK, great. So this is a really interesting question. They really should focus on all the different kinds of strategies that get readers to be flexible. I think Guillermo really emphasized this idea of teaching flexibility in how you learn vocabulary, how you try to figure out unfamiliar vocabulary.

This has really been shown to be extremely important, because it gives readers who are struggling a nimbleness that more confident readers have automatically, because they are so used to going back and looking at the words to see if they really understand them. So the strategies that, as I said, can cue struggling readers into what experts do really has been shown to be very successful with struggling readers, struggling learners at all ages.

Thank you, Terry. My next question is for you, Guillermo. What do instructors need to know when implementing new vocabulary instructional practices? How can they best prepare students and themselves for a potential increase in rigor?

So when implementing new vocabulary practices, be patient with yourself. It takes a lot of time and practice to get it right-- to get into a comfortable rhythm and flow with the activities.

Keep in mind you're going to experience lots of failures at first, in that the lessons won't go as you planned. For example, when I started introducing the high-frequency words using the different context, it was rough at first. I realized afterward I wasn't using student friendly words, so I bombed a lot at first. And that's normal. But with time, persistence, and really a strong desire to make it work, I succeeded.

And it really does work. Students really engage with the words. So be patient with yourself. Be sure to plan, prepare. And always reflect on how your lesson went and how you can make it better.

Now in terms of preparing students and themselves for the potential of increased rigor, make sure that the activities you develop and/or use are generative. And quite honestly, just fill-in-the-blanks and matching exercises are not going to cut it in terms of rigor, in my experience. When you look at vocabulary resources, look for materials that give students the opportunity to analyze and think critically and in varied activities. Look for materials that for students to produce work that shows their understanding of the vocabulary words.

And, guys, if you want rigor, teach these high-frequency academic words, because they're everywhere, and you'll get the most bang for your buck-- so generative activities and beyond. Sudie?

Thank you, Guillermo. I have another question for you, so don't mute just yet. How do you convey the importance of vocabulary instruction to students? How do you connect the vocabulary instruction to their everyday lives, learning, and their career goals?

So in that last slide, I showed you the vocabulary posters that are plastered all over the walls in my room. And students see the words everywhere when they come into the room. So I stress to students that, just like in my classroom, they're also going to encounter these words everywhere in their everyday life.

They're going to see them in their math books, science books, health books, in the newspaper, TV, radio-- literally everywhere. Teachers will use them in their parent conferences. Interviewers will use them during interviews. Your boss, your co-workers will use them.

And my goal is to get students to understand that these words are no longer those fancy words-- or, like Terry mentioned earlier, the gobbledygook words. I want students to know, these are words that are common and that we all use, including students, in our everyday lives to communicate.

So it's great when students actually hear and see them, and then they actually report back. Because that encourages them and empowers them to keep learning new words. So keeping the words in students' awareness as much as possible, however you can at all times, will really help convey the importance of vocabulary to the student. Sudie?

Thank you, Guillermo. And Terry, my last question is for you. Thank you so much for sharing the research and literature, that a lot of your slides were based on, for the teachers. Along that vein, what resources and research are available that educators can tap into in order to encourage continuous learning for their students? How do we help them become lifelong learn of new vocabulary words and phrases?

One methodology for really encouraging these learners to become lifelong learners and to feel confident about themselves as learners is the kind of technology that we find on many Chromebooks-- find in books that will allow the learner to link to a dictionary, link to a definition, that give them kind of automatic feedback on words that might be unfamiliar.

This is a technological strategy that is often used with learners who are learning to read in a second language, but it is also really common in some of the blended learning interventions that are used with adolescents and with young adults-- like Read 180-- so that the actual reading process is not interrupted by, oh, I can't figure out this word. Oh, I've got to figure out what it is before I can go on.

If they can press a link or go to a marginal note-- and OK, I've got a meaning. It's a good enough meaning. I'm going to keep making sense out of what I'm reading. That can be an extremely powerful motivator, to give individuals the confidence to read widely, to read broadly, and to read with the kind of stamina that is needed for them to become really good readers. So that's definitely part of it.

Other aides are, as Guillermo said, just making the classroom very, very literate rich-- literacy. There are words all over the place. These are words that the students have gone over with their teachers. They kind of know what they mean. They want to experiment with these words in their writing. They don't quite remember them, but they know that the poster is there between the two windows.

So really enriching the environment with lots and lots of words-- familiar words and unfamiliar words-- is another strategy. Now, has this been really proven with adults? I couldn't find any research about that, but it is one of the proven, proven strategies for teaching young children-- elementary-school children-- to learn to read and to write, and to learn and to read and to write with fluency.

So those are really my two top recommendations. One is technology. One is a pretty Luddite way, because you can make these charts with a magic marker.

Thank you so much, Terry. And I appreciate you pointing out that gap in the research. It would be great if one of the brilliant minds on this call would eventually do some research, so we have some adult-ed vocabulary research to look at specifically. Thank you for pointing that out.

So now for you in the audience, we have a few more minutes left. If you have any specific questions for Terry or Guillermo, there's a chat pod in the middle of your screen. Please answer any questions that you might have specific to vocabulary instruction, whether it's about research or practice, for Terry and Guillermo. And we'll give a few moments to do that.

And again, if you have questions, put them in the middle of the screen in that questions chat pod-- where it says, please type your questions here. And I'll give us a few minutes to see if any questions come in before we close out.

While you guys are thinking about that, I really liked, Terry, that you mentioned how you can make these posters and make these things. And it's totally connected with Guillermo's example of how he creates the posters and puts them up on the wall. And so these are things that we know are research based, and they're not overly complicated to do. So that's very cool.

I, as someone who's not a vocabulary instructor, and someone who hasn't-- I come from CTE. And so I've taught CTE-specific vocabulary. This is really informative for me. So thank you guys both for that. I see we have a few people typing in our questions box, so we'll see what those questions are.

Ms. Miller said, "Is it possible to contract to provide this training to consortium staff members on site? This is really helpful." If you could please send that request through the CAEP TAP website. Veronica, would you mind putting that into the chat pod? And if you have a specific training request through TAP then we can discuss that with you separately. Thank you for that.

And then Sean said, for Guillermo, are the vocabulary you teach separate from the daily lesson?

Yes, Sean. The vocabulary words I teach are a lesson in and of themselves. So they're completely independent from the daily lesson that we do, in terms of comprehension or alphabetics or fluency. Yeah, this is its own vocabulary lesson.

Guillermo, was that kind of your way of scaffolding what's going to be in the lesson that day?

You know, these vocabulary words, every now and then we'll find them in the lessons that we do in class. And whenever that happens I ring the bell-- ling, ling, ling, ling, ling. So these vocabulary words aren't in the materials we're using. They're just literally vocabulary words that I grabbed from the academic word list and created these lessons for.

So later on in incomprehension, in fluency, I will use these words that we learned in vocabulary. So that's how I tie it in. But they're not in the lesson. Does that make sense?

It does. It absolutely does. So basically you're preparing them for this type of vocabulary words that they're going to see, even once they move further past your class. It's very intentional doing that. Very cool. Thank you.

And I see we have Daryl typing. We'll give few moments. And Debbie-- thank you both. Debbie said, "What high-frequency academic list do you use?" Guillermo?

It is the Averil Coxhead High-Incidence Academic Word List. If you Google it, you'll be able to find it. A-V-E-R-I-L.

And then Daryl said, "How much time is spent daily on vocabulary instruction?"

So Daryl, the first day, which is Introduction, that one I spend at least 30 minutes to 45 minutes, because I really want to get the introduction in. But every activity after that, I try and do a maximum 20 minutes-- 20, 25 minutes. So it's just the first day that's the longer one. I've gotten it down to 35 minutes, but that's as good as it's gotten.

Thank you, Guillermo. And I just popped a link in there for that list. There's a bunch of different PDFs that you can find online, but I just went with the first list I found. So thank you for telling us about that resource.

And that will be available. We do include all of our resources-- and the recordings and everything like that will be on the CAEP website, which is caladulted.org. So you will be able to see this recording and get any links that are posted in here, as well as the PDF or the PowerPoint.

At this point, I'm going to go ahead and turn this over to Veronica. Please do not forget to complete your evaluation once this window closes. And I also want to take a brief moment-- sorry, Veronica-- to thank Guillermo and Terry. Thank you so much for the time and collaboration you guys put into doing this. I really appreciate it. I'm sure we all on this webinar appreciate it. Thank you both.

Thank you for asking us.

Thank you.

I am back. Thank you both, Guillermo and Terry, for today's webinar, as well as Sudie and Vicki for your support during this webinar.

I have posted a couple links into the questions pod, that we were using. The first one is a link. If you would like a training such as this one, or any other professional development topics that you would like within your consortium or at your agency site, please be sure to submit a support request there-- and I will work with you and with the American Institutes for Research to host that training for you.

I've also typed in the URL of where the webinar recording as well as today's PowerPoint will be posted later on this afternoon. This web page is on the California Adult Education Program website. And it's under Our Webinars for Instructional Practices on that web page. So please be sure to follow that URL.

Again, as Sudie mentioned, we will close the webinar room. And when we do, the easy evaluation will appear. Please be sure to complete the evaluation and let Terry and Guillermo know what you thought about today's webinar, as well as if there are any other professional development topics or technical assistance you have at this time.

We do use the results of those surveys to inform our future professional development planning, so please be sure to give us your honest feedback. We thank you all very much for your time and your participation, and you all have a great afternoon.