November 14, 2024 • 34 mins
Dianna Townsend talks to us about providing meaningful encounters with words by focusing our instruction in language-rich classroom environments. She provides some concrete teaching strategies, backed by decades of research in vocabulary instruction and learning. Dr. Townsend is known for her work centering on the language development of adolescents, with specific attention to vocabulary. Her most recent book is Words Worth Using: Supporting Adolescents’ Power with Academic Vocabulary, published by Teachers College Press in 2022. In it, she offers practical support for adolescents’ vocabulary development, to learn words by using them in ways that are meaningful to their identity, language background, and interests. At the University of Nevada Reno, Dr. Dianna Townsend is the Program Coordinator of the Literacy Studies Program within the College of Education and Human Development.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Dianna's book - https://www.tcpress.com/words-worth-using-9780807767627
- Dr. Maneka Deanna Brooks' website - https://brooksphd.com/
To cite this episode: Persohn, L. (Host). (2024, Nov. 14). A conversation with Dianna Townsend (Season 5, No. 4) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/64F8-D0E5-AA9C-742F-3005-9
Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Education research has a problem the work of
brilliant education researchersoften doesn't reach the practice
of brilliant teachers.
Classroom Caffeine is here tohelp.
In each episode, I talk with atop education researcher or an
expert educator about what theyhave learned from years of
(00:32):
research and experiences.
In this episode, dr DianaTownsend talks to us about
providing meaningful encounterswith words by focusing our
instruction in language-richclassroom environments.
Dr Townsend is known for herwork centering on the language
development of adolescents, withspecific attention to
(00:53):
vocabulary.
Her work has been published inReading Research Quarterly, the
Elementary School Journal, theJournal of Adolescent and Adult
Literacy, reading and Writing,an interdisciplinary journal,
and Topics and LanguageDisorders, as well as other
journals and books.
Her most recent book is WordsWorth Using Supporting
Adolescence Power with AcademicVocabulary, published by
(01:17):
Teachers College Press in 2022.
In it, she offers practicalsupport for adolescents'
vocabulary development to learnwords by using them in ways that
are meaningful to theiridentity, language, background
and interests.
At University of Nevada, reno,dr Diana Townsend is the program
coordinator of the LiteracyStudies Program within the
(01:38):
College of Education and HumanDevelopment.
For more information about ourguest, stay tuned to the end of
this episode.
So pour a cup of your favoritedrink and join me.
Your host Lindsay Persaud forClassroom Caffeine research to
energize your teaching practice.
Diana, thank you for joining me.
(01:59):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm so glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
So, from your own experiences in education, will
you share with us one or twomoments that inform your
thinking now?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I would love to.
When I get asked a questionlike this, I just immediately go
to work that I do with studentsin the K-12 space.
So I've been a researcher hereat UNR for 17, 18 years now but
a lot of my research brings meback to K-12 classrooms and
that's where I just learned themost, working with students.
(02:33):
So about 12 years ago I wasworking in a middle school for
an entire year and working withstudents and teachers, primarily
supporting teachers.
But one of the things we did aspart of that project was we ran
focus groups with students.
These were middle schoolstudents, primarily multilingual
(02:54):
learners, and the work we weredoing with teachers was focused
on supporting their academicvocabulary development and
trying different things in theclassroom within content areas,
across content areas that wouldsupport multilingual learners,
development of academic wordknowledge.
And we ran these focus groupsof students and we showed them
videos of lessons that theyparticipated in and we asked
(03:16):
them to stop the video anytimethey wanted to share something
about what their experiences waslike during those lessons.
And the students had to stopthe lessons at such interesting
places and they would tell usthings like that was really
confusing.
I didn't understand what washappening there or that word was
too hard for me or I didn'treally know what I was supposed
(03:37):
to do there and for the teachersand for me to listen to the
students reflect on their ownexperiences in the lessons
related to these specificimportant concepts we were
trying to help them learn was sopowerful, and it was.
I had done work along theselines before, but that one, that
particular year, really standsout to me.
I don't know that there'sanything more important than
(03:58):
listening to students tell uswhat is and isn't working for
them, what is and is not clearfor them, when they feel
empowered to play with a concept, to build deep knowledge of a
concept, to use their knowledgeof that concept in writing or
discussion, versus when theyjust needed more support than
they were getting.
And then, similarly, just a fewyears ago, I was on sabbatical
and I was teaching high schoolfull time, again as part of my
(04:19):
sabbatical, and I was testing areading comprehension
intervention that I haddeveloped.
Sabbatical, and I was testing areading comprehension
intervention that I haddeveloped and we focused on
words as tools for supportingreading comprehension,
specifically connectives, thosereally interesting connective
words you know, often known astransition words or signal words
.
And so we were supporting highschool multilingual learners.
They were designated aslong-term English learners and
(04:43):
they were playing with all thesewords and we set up enough
instructional routines wherethey were in control of which
connectives go where and why inspecific sentences, and
connectives tell us reallyimportant things about how ideas
are related to each other in asentence.
So for the students to engage inthat work where they were
deciding and they were debatingand they were negotiating,
(05:04):
negotiating and they were somepretty heated arguments about is
that a, however, or afurthermore, which goes here and
why?
Just stepping back and lettingthe students be in charge of
word choice and message.
Again, it kind of echoed thatearlier work I had done in the
middle school where we reallyneed to build in a lot of
opportunities in teaching,learning and research to let
(05:26):
students show us what is andisn't working, and so that's
kind of always been intuitive tome.
But I've had these couple ofexperiences where it's just it's
just really been hammered homethat at my peril should I set up
a project and not listen to thestudents?
And I don't think anybody eversays we shouldn't listen to
students, but it's easy to runout of time and so it's just
(05:48):
kind of always front and centerfor me.
We need to prioritize that.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
I love both of these stories and, in fact, as you
were talking about that firstmethodology of having students
watch back something they've hadan experience of and pausing it
, I think that is so powerfulbecause, you're right, what we
anticipate as being the mostimportant things aren't always
the most important things toyoung people, so I love that
idea of asking them about whathas been most impactful, what's
(06:14):
been most confusing for them and, as you were telling those,
diana, you used a term thatlisteners may not be fully
familiar with, and that's theidea of a long-term English
learner.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Can you tell us, share with us, what that means?
I can, yeah, and fulldisclosure.
I find that label reallyproblematic and not super
helpful for students.
So the definition of along-term English learner it can
vary, but in general it's amultilingual learner who's been
designated as an English learnerfor longer than five to seven
years.
So when I my students when Iwas teaching high school were
multilingual learners about 80%of them were born in the US and
(06:51):
had all of their language ofinstruction had been English,
but they were still designatedas English learners after
multiple years of receivingEnglish language development
services.
So their label had switchedfrom EL or English learner, to
LTEL or long-term Englishlearner, and there's a lot of
baggage in that label.
That again doesn't really helpstudents.
But in our field I think it'simportant when we recognize that
(07:16):
we're working with groups ofkids who have been designated,
which has caused them to begrouped in certain ways, and so
I think it's important for us torecognize how kids are being
labeled.
But I'll tell you what thosestudents were anything but
monolithic in their language andtheir knowledge and their
engagement and their interestand their readiness for
different topics, and so thatlabel can have very much a
(07:39):
deficit model with it, but thestudents I worked with stand in
direct contrast to any of thekind of the assumptions that
someone might make about thatlabel.
Long term English learner.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
I really appreciate that and I don't know if I've
never heard it before, so Idon't know if that's a label
that's not used in the statethat I'm working in, or maybe
because I my school experienceis largely in elementary.
Maybe we just never had anyonewho who had that label.
Maybe we just never had anyonewho had that label.
But I can certainly agree withyou that it may not be the most
(08:10):
helpful thing in the world forkids because, right, what does
that actually mean and what kindof light does that portray
those students in?
Yeah, very interesting andcertainly something I will do a
little bit more reading about,because, yeah, I can imagine
that just wouldn't be superhelpful for a teacher to have,
you know, a student come with alabel like that, and certainly
not helpful for the child.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
No, no, and the teachers I've worked with
consistently have kind of justignored assumptions and some of
the deficit orientations ofmodels, and so this just seems
to be like a function of thesystem we work in and how do we
schedule kids and how do we getkids in the right classes, and
but yeah, there's a lot.
There's a lot of kind ofnegative side effects of that.
(08:52):
And to learn more about this, Ihighly recommend the work of
Manica Brooks.
She has a great book thattackles the issues with long
term English learners.
Her work has influenced minequite a lot but she's a good
person to learn from on thistopic learners.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Her work has influenced mine quite a lot, but
she's a good person to learnfrom on this topic.
Great, great, we'll locate thatbook and we can also link that
in your show notes as well.
Great, oh yeah, thank you somuch, and I appreciate the
reference to a work that couldhelp us to really understand
what that term means and whatthe potential implications of it
might be.
And maybe that's something thatyou know.
Whenever I was a young teacher,like, let's say, 20 years ago,
I didn't necessarily understandthe impact of how kids are
(09:28):
labeled within the confines ofschool and what that exactly
means to how they're viewed or,like you said, how they're
grouped, how they sort of movethrough school and cohorts, and
also certainly how that wouldlimit things like their language
development in really odd ways,because I think that the
intention is to support languagedevelopment but it doesn't
actually play out that way.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, it's so true.
In my book I highlight the workI did in this high school.
My recent book, words WorthUsing, I highlight the work I
did in this high school, andevery chapter starts with a
vignette tells stories aboutstudents who again, kind of are
in direct contrast to theselabels that often have deficit
orientations.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
So, Diana, what do you?
What do you want listeners toknow about your work?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
So my work has largely been focused on word
level knowledge and what itmeans to know a word and
different kinds of words thatstudents encounter in school and
out of school.
And vocabulary knowledge iscritical.
It just predicts so much.
It predicts readingcomprehension, it predicts
academic achievement in mostcontent areas.
(10:34):
It actually predicts all sortsof life outcomes.
That might be becausevocabulary knowledge is a proxy
or a substitute for knowledge ingeneral or for reading
comprehension in some ways.
But word knowledge, the wordswe know, that knowledge really
comprises a whole set ofbuilding blocks that we need to
make sense of the world and thetexts we encounter in it.
(10:56):
So vocabulary knowledge iscritical.
At the same time, the idea ofvocabulary for the sake of
vocabulary is something wefrankly don't have time for in
schools.
So learning words just for thesake of learning new words, or
because vocabulary is somethingI kind of, you know, need to get
my vocabulary in for the weekthat we can move away from
Providing students withintentional opportunities to
(11:17):
learn words that really matter,for what they're learning is how
we need to be oriented towardvocabulary instruction.
When I think about working with, for example, my pre-teachers,
I say to them what do you wantkids walking out the door being
able to do today that theycouldn't do when they walked in,
right so, just what you know?
What's a strong learningobjective?
And then I say what words dokids need to know to meet that
(11:39):
objective?
That's, that's what should bedriving our vocabulary work.
Not here's my list of 20 words.
I did my vocabulary.
But what words do students needto be able to use to meet the
worthwhile learning objectiveswe're putting in place for them?
So that's kind of the bigtakeaway from a lot of my work.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Well, one thing that it really made me think of this
idea of how we should approachteaching vocabulary in
classrooms.
It reminds me a bit of how weshould teach spelling as well.
We don't teach words for thesake of teaching words.
We teach them in a context thathas meaning and that is
interconnected, and I think thatwhen it comes to planning for
classroom instruction, when itcomes to looking at trajectories
(12:17):
of learning, I find those kindsof concepts so helpful in
knowing what's most importantand how do we actually spend the
time the very limited time thatwe have with students.
Vocabulary is so important, butit must be connected to ideas
and things that we're learningand not approached in this sort
of isolated kind of here's theword list for this week.
(12:38):
I'm hoping that you might offerus a few strategies or tips or
things that you've learned overthe years as to how we can
really make that kind ofvocabulary learning most
impactful or most relevant forour students.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Absolutely.
I think once we know what wehope students are going to walk
away with from a lesson andwe've identified a few central
concepts that are reallycritical for that particular
objective, then we get to do thefun work of playing with words
and we get to think about wordmeanings.
We get to think about wordmeanings, we get to think about
word parts and we get to thinkabout using words in ways that
(13:13):
are relevant to our students'lives, that they get to connect
words to their own lives andthat they get to connect the
words to that kind of the biggerpicture of whatever they're
studying.
And so that boils down to somepretty key principles of
vocabulary instruction that arekind of decades of research have
borne this out.
So multiple opportunities topractice using words,
(13:36):
personalized word meanings,multiple opportunities to learn
about how words play out indifferent contexts, explicit
instruction so student-friendlydefinitions, lots of visuals,
lots of examples andnon-examples all of that kind of
builds this deep word knowledgeof central concepts.
That should be kind of guidinghow we think about vocabulary
(13:57):
instruction.
And then another piece is wordconsciousness.
We can also say metalinguisticawareness, which I talk a lot
about in my recent book.
But this word consciousness orthis awareness of how words work
and this curiosity about wordsand paying attention to things
like roots and affixes that showup in multiple words and
(14:18):
wondering does it mean the samething here?
Is it means over there?
Fostering that wordconsciousness can really support
independent word learning.
We can't, as teachers, teachkids every word they need to
know or they're going to learnin school.
If we try, it's a fool's errand.
We cannot do that.
So we want to balance ourinstruction between this
language-rich environment thatfosters a lot of word
(14:41):
consciousness and curiosity andattention to words, and then, at
the same time, within thatlanguage-rich environment, we've
picked our central conceptsthat students need for the task
at hand, and when we do both,we're giving students
opportunities to learn a lot ofwords incidentally, not toward
mastery, but just learn a littlebit more about a lot of
different words.
(15:01):
But we're also very clear onwhat we want.
We're helping them developownership of what concepts we
want to help them developownership of.
Now.
What does that look like?
You know what types ofinstruction or routines help
kids develop ownership of whatconcepts we want to help them
develop ownership of.
Now.
What does that look like?
What types of instructionalroutines help kids develop
ownership.
Well again, I kind of come backto this less is more space all
the time.
We don't need 50 or 100vocabulary games or routines.
(15:21):
Those are fine, they're fun,but we don't really need them.
We need some high utilityroutines that we can integrate
in all the other things we'redoing A concept map, also called
a semantic map.
I've also called it ametalinguistic map.
A lot of folks would be veryfamiliar with this.
We've got the word in themiddle, we've got some bubbles
around the side and each ofthose bubbles has a different
(15:43):
type of or different dimensionof meaning for that particular
word, right.
So we could have thestudent-friendly definition.
We could have a technicaldefinition.
Another bubble might have themorphology, the roots and
affixes.
Another bubble for ourmultilingual learners might have
cognates or translations.
We might have a bubble wherestudents get to sketch something
(16:05):
that's meaningful for them inrelation to that word.
We might have a bubble wherestudents are making a connection
between that word and whatthey're currently studying.
Some words are great forsynonyms and antonyms Not all
words, like photosynthesis, forexample, does not have really a
synonym or an antonym.
So we can think about a conceptmap being adaptable and using
different dimensions of wordknowledge for different words,
(16:27):
depending on what we're havingstudents do.
Now, one key thing about agreat tool like concept maps is
we wouldn't have students create40 of them, you know, for like
a 40 word vocabulary packet.
That would start to feel likebusy work.
It'd be not very meaningful.
So we've pared down a short setof words that are critical for
kids to really learn and then weuse concept maps for them.
(16:47):
And they go back to the conceptmap.
Oh, there's that word,photosynthesis.
Again, we practiced that lastweek.
Let's pull out our concept map.
What else can we add to ourconcept map that we just learned
today about that?
And so it becomes a kind of adocument that documents their
growing, deepening, developingword knowledge.
So it's a living document forthem.
(17:08):
So that's one great highutility routine that, once we've
selected our central concepts,we can help students really
develop deep knowledge of them.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Thank you for that, because I think that you know,
we know that teachers get a lotof information and they get a
lot of directives from a lot ofdifferent spaces.
And so I think, whenever we canprovide these sort of high
utility kinds of concepts and Ilove the idea of using a concept
map or a semantic map in kindof tailored ways I even
envisioned, you know, yourconcept map could include, you
(17:41):
know, four of these eight to 10options, right, and then giving
kids a way to sort of tailorthat and make it their own based
on the mode that they learnbest in.
And then, of course, you couldcreate, like a classroom
semantic map based on all thosedifferent options.
So you gave me a lot of reallyconcrete ideas about how we
could use what I feel like is avery familiar concept, a very
(18:02):
familiar idea about how to teachvocabulary in a really fresh
and relevant and tailored sortof way.
So I appreciate that, diana,great.
So what else would you likelisteners to know about your
work?
Speaker 2 (18:15):
I think that one of the things I learn over and over
again as a researcher is theexisting research is a great
place to start and it guides alot of what I do when I'm either
teaching students or starting anew study in schools.
But the research only gets usso far.
There's no perfect study outthere that gives us anything
that's one size fits all.
(18:35):
Now, those earlier principlesof vocabulary instruction I
mentioned.
There's a lot of research tosupport those.
We can't really go wrong whenwe're abiding by those
principles, but how they playout in any given class with any
given group of students is goingto vary pretty, pretty widely.
So I think it's important forall of us to think about let's
(18:56):
start with the research and thenlet's let the kids tell us
where to go next.
And that doesn't mean I kind ofthrow the research out if
something isn't working withstudents, but I think, okay, the
research worked in this settingwith these students.
It's not working here with mine.
What do I need to dodifferently?
What other research do I needto bring in?
How do I need to go back tothat research and recognize that
it's not the perfect fit foreither my objectives or my
(19:17):
setting?
Speaker 1 (19:19):
What it made me think about is how research is being,
in many instances and in manysettings, really heavy-handedly
given to teachers, where they'reforced to sort of follow it to
the letter when it may not applyto their individual learners
and to me, that's actually areally important point, because
I think that that's one way thatthe story, the message in
(19:41):
education has gotten reallytwisted is that narrow
interpretation of what researchis.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, it's just my two cents.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
The context of the research matters and the context
of how it initially came intopublication, as well as the
context in which it's translated.
Because, again, I think that sooften in education we think we
have the thing that's going tofix everything and then it is
sort of forced upon teachers inways that aren't always
(20:11):
productive.
And I think that theencouragement to go back to the
research to say, well, what didit actually say, or what was the
context in which the study wasconducted, I think that's very
helpful, especially if you areup against a concept that is, in
air quotes, supposed to workand you're not seeing evidence
(20:31):
of that in your own area, right?
So I think that there'ssomething really important in
what you've told us about how webecome savvy consumers of
research yeah, it reminds me ofthe story you started with.
Is that we've got to find outwhat are the kids telling us,
what are our students telling us, what is our own experience
telling us and how does thatinform particular angles that we
(20:54):
play up from research or how wego back to other potential
research sources in order tobecome better informed and to
better implement the big ideasthat other people have found
through research.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yeah, right now I'm teaching middle school almost
every day as part of a currentproject and I'm designing
lessons and implementing themand I am abiding by everything
the research says should work.
And it's just so much messierthan that, and I think we really
need to use the research,attend to the research and leave
(21:28):
a lot of room for growth inwhat else needs to happen
besides what the research says,and also acknowledge that every
statistically significantresearch study won't apply to
every single situation out there, and so we need to be open
about incorporating otherresearch or re-examining our own
practices to see did I reallyalign them to the research or
(21:50):
not?
And so it's just a greatintellectual journey anytime
we're thinking aboutresearch-based or
research-informed instruction,and I think staying open and
reading the research carefullyand then staying open and
curious is a good pathwayforward.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah, I totally agree .
Another thing that that made methink of is the fact that
whenever we are writing upresearch, there are a lot of
ideas that don't make the cut.
And there's, you know, right,there's this I think of.
You know, the thinking process,the research process is often
iterative, it is messy, it iscomplex, and then what we see in
(22:25):
a publication is in a linearwriting format, and so a lot of
the messiness is necessarilytrimmed away just because of the
mode of communication.
Isn't really a form that allowsus to sort of double back on
ideas, to create a lot ofcaveats or parenthetical kinds
(22:45):
of notes, much like you can in aconversation or as you would if
you were talking about theresearch you're doing with
someone.
It doesn't translate the sameway into writing, and so I think
that that's another importantthing for us to keep in mind as
we translate research intopractice is that reanimating
that from.
You know, a two-dimensionalblack and white kind of print is
very different than probablyhow it started and certainly how
(23:07):
it ends, and I think that youknow.
In that, I think there's somegrace to be found about how we
interpret what we see and how welike.
To your point.
How are we ensuring that, ifwe're looking to get the same
results that a research studydid, do we have the same
conditions?
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Absolutely, absolutely.
I really appreciate your pointabout what's kind of lost in
traditional researchpublications that could be
really informative for the field, and I think that's the
conversations and collaborationsthat happen in spaces like this
and between researchers andteachers.
Those are some of the mostgenerative spaces to push our
field forward.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, I totally agree .
I think that as a classroomteacher, and certainly as a
beginning researcher, I maybewasn't fully aware of just how
messy that work can be and howmuch of that mess is cleaned up
in the final products that wesee.
So I think that, like I said,it's helpful for early
(24:08):
researchers, practitioners, tounderstand that that's cut away
during the writing process.
It's sort of ever present inthe research process, because
anytime you're working withhumans, things are going to be a
little messy.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Definitely, and it's one of the most fun parts of it
all, but it doesn't see thelight of day as often as it
should.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
So is there anything else you would like to share
about your work, Diana?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
One more thing that's a little more focused that I'd
love to just speak quickly to isthe importance of morphology,
so understanding roots andaffixes and how they tell us
good information about whatwords mean and how they help us
make connections across words.
It's it's one of I think maybeone of the more under leveraged
(24:52):
tools out there to supportstudents, especially older
readers who may have historiesof reading difficulty.
Morphology is a great way in tosupporting both word level
reading as well as knowledge ofindividual words, and then we've
got these nice bridges tocomprehension, and so morphology
is just a pretty powerful spacefor all of us to learn in, and
(25:14):
to that end, there's greatresources out there for all of
us to learn more aboutmorphology.
I feel like in the last decadeI started knowing kind of the
expected amount of Greek andLatin roots and that type of
thing, and as I've done deeperand deeper dives, you just get
more and more curious.
Rarely do I hear a word withoutwondering where'd that come
from, and so it's a fun learningcurve to be on, and I get the
(25:38):
sense sometimes from teachersthat I work with that they don't
really feel ready to dig intothat with their students, that
they haven't had the 10 yearsI've had to explore this stuff
and I totally respect that.
I actually felt that way as ahigh school English teacher that
I didn't know enough.
I just want to put out therethat one of the things I've
learned is it's really okay andfun to learn with your students.
There's great tools out therewhen a word comes up or a
student has a question about aword, or, as a teacher, I
(25:59):
recognize a word part but I'mnot really know enough about it
to teach it.
There's these great resourcesonline where you can just spend
a couple minutes with yourstudents looking back at roots,
where they came from throughhistory and then make
connections to other words, andso that's a great way to
integrate vocabulary learningbecause you're paying attention
to these meaningful word parts.
Vocabulary learning becauseyou're paying attention to these
meaningful word parts, it's agreat way to support students
(26:23):
reading of multisyllabic andmorphologically complex words
and it doesn't take a lot ofinstructional time or planning.
So I'd be happy to share moreresources on that in the show
notes or anywhere that might behelpful.
But morphology is a reallypowerful tool that I think
there's enough evidence that'ssaying, yeah, let's go big with
this.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
I love that.
I love what you're saying,diana, and absolutely, if you
have resources to share, wewould be happy to post a list of
links there.
Because, yeah, morphologicalinstruction I think really is
key to maintaining thatcuriosity about words,
particularly as learners getolder, but also really to hand
that over right, so that we doin fact have young people in
(27:06):
schools who become young adults,and then adults who are still
curious about words, who aremaybe doing the crossword puzzle
every week.
Or they hear a word or they seea word and they still go, huh,
I wonder where that came from,and then they go back to a
source in order to learn moreabout it.
And the other thing I think yousaid that's really key here,
that I think is hard for a lotof teachers is being okay with
(27:30):
not knowing everything aboutsomething you're going to teach,
and I just really appreciatethat sort of permission that I
think we have to give ourselvesreally over and over again to
say you can't be an expert ineverything.
Right, and sometimes the bestteaching really happens in the
moment.
When you and your studentsencounter a word, you think, huh
, I know what it means, but I'mnot sure where it came from.
(27:52):
I'm not sure how we arrived atthis particular form or usage of
this word.
Let's look that up together,because I think we're also in
those moments, modeling foryoung people how to be a
lifelong learner of new words.
Yeah, I really love that Great.
So, diana, given the challengesof today's educational climate,
(28:12):
what message do you wantteachers to hear?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
When it comes to creating opportunities for
students to learn words, I thinkit's okay to begin with the
idea that less is more.
We do have limitedinstructional time and we have a
lot of challenges facingstudents and teachers in
classrooms.
And when we are really clear onwhat we want a given lesson or
unit of study to do and we knowwhat small number of concepts
(28:39):
are central for that goal, wedon't have to worry about
fitting in time for the longlist of words.
We just integrate meaningfulwork with those concepts
throughout different learningactivities.
It's a bit of a misnomer,however, to say less is more,
because when you do deep divesinto a few concepts, you're
(29:02):
supporting word knowledge oflots of related words for those
concepts, right?
So in science, for example, wemight be thinking about the word
astronomy.
When we help students do a deepdive into the word astronomy,
we have opportunities to helpthem connect to things they
already know or build newknowledge about things like
telescopes, different forms ofthe word astronomy, like
(29:25):
astronomer, we might get intothe life cycle of stars and get
into nebula and supernovas andthose types of words.
Think about well-knownastronomers that have made
important contributions to thefield and build deep knowledge
of the word astronomy.
That, along the way, buildsdeveloping knowledge maybe not
(29:46):
mastery, but developingknowledge of lots of other words
and concepts.
That looks really differentfrom a list of here's 20 words
on astronomy to learn it's we'regoing to develop knowledge,
deep concept knowledge ofastronomy, and you're going to
pick up lots of other wordknowledge along the way.
So starting with less is moredoesn't mean students are having
fewer opportunities to learn alot of words.
It's just much more organizedand clear for them.
(30:06):
They're building deep knowledgeof the concepts that matter
most, building kind ofincidental or peripheral
knowledge of a lot of otherterms that they'll be able to
recognize down the road.
And so it lets us know asteachers, we're doing our job
pretty well, even though, no, Ididn't teach my students deep
knowledge of 40 concepts thisweek.
That was never going to happenanyway and so I've instead given
(30:29):
them really meaningfulopportunities to build deep word
knowledge that gives themtraction going forward in these
fields or topics we're learningabout.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
What an important message, and I think in my mind
it helps us cut through some ofthe noise of what instruction is
supposed to look like, and Iknow even in my instruction now
that becomes so important toknow what to emphasize and what
to focus on, and I love the ideaof how we sort of organically
bring other words along that arerelated to a central concept.
(31:01):
That becomes a part of thecollective conversation in a
classroom.
That really gives so muchweight, I think, to those
conversations whenever they aredriven by students, kind of back
to where this conversationstarted right, listening to the
young people that we're workingwith and understanding what do
they want, what do they see,what are they interested in,
(31:22):
what confuses them, what iscrystal clear to them and how do
we get there.
Well, thank you for yourcontributions to the field of
education and thanks so much forspending some time with me
today.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure.
This was a lot of fun.
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Dr Diana Townsend's research centers on the language
development of adolescents,with specific attention to
vocabulary.
She examines both the uniquelanguage demands of the
disciplines and effectiveinstructional strategies to help
students understand and use thelanguage of the disciplines the
(32:00):
Elementary School Journal, theJournal of Adolescent and Adult
Literacy, reading and Writingand Interdisciplinary Journal
and Topics in Language Disorders, as well as other journals and
multiple books.
Her most recent book, wordsWorth Using Supporting
Adolescence Power with AcademicVocabulary, was published by
Teachers College Press in 2022.
Dr Townsend's research has beenfunded by the Spencer
Foundation and the Institute ofEducation Sciences at the US
(32:22):
Department of Education.
She serves as a principalmember of the Education Research
Scientific Review Panel withthe Institute of Education
Sciences.
She's also a member of theReading Standing Committee for
the National Assessment ofEducation Progress.
Assessment of EducationProgress In Nevada.
(32:42):
Dr Townsend is the co-founderand president of the Nevada
Adolescent Literacy Network andthe lead author of the Nevada
State Literacy Plan.
Diana is a winner of theUniversity of Nevada Reno's
Tibbets Distinguished TeacherAward.
She created the InnovativeVirtual Reading Clinic in the
online Masters of Educationprogram in reading curriculum
and instruction to supportremote and rural teachers in a
(33:04):
graduate-level practicumexperience Within the College of
Education and Human Developmentat UNR, dr Townsend is the
program coordinator of theLiteracy Studies program.
Check out the show notes forlinks to resources mentioned in
this episode.
For the good of all students,classroom Caffeine aims to
(33:26):
energize education, research andpractice.
If this show gives you thingsto think about, help us spread
the word.
Talk to your colleagues andeducator friends about what you
hear.
You can support the show bysubscribing, liking and
reviewing this podcast throughyour podcast provider.
Visit classroomcaffeinecom,where you can subscribe to
(33:48):
receive our short monthlynewsletter, the Espresso Shot.
On our website, you can alsolearn more about each guest,
find transcripts for ourepisodes, explore topics using
our dropdown-down menu of tags,request an episode topic or
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survey or learn more about theresearch we're doing on our
(34:09):
publications page.
Connect with us on social mediathrough Instagram, facebook and
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We would love to hear from you.
Special thanks to the ClassroomCaffeine team Leah Berger,
abaya Valuru, stephanie Bransonand Shaba Oshfath.
As always, I raise my mug toyou, teachers.
Thanks for joining me.
Education research has a problem the work of
brilliant education researchersoften doesn't reach the practice
of brilliant teachers.
Classroom Caffeine is here tohelp.
In each episode, I talk with atop education researcher or an
expert educator about what theyhave learned from years of
(00:32):
research and experiences.
In this episode, dr DianaTownsend talks to us about
providing meaningful encounterswith words by focusing our
instruction in language-richclassroom environments.
Dr Townsend is known for herwork centering on the language
development of adolescents, withspecific attention to
(00:53):
vocabulary.
Her work has been published inReading Research Quarterly, the
Elementary School Journal, theJournal of Adolescent and Adult
Literacy, reading and Writing,an interdisciplinary journal,
and Topics and LanguageDisorders, as well as other
journals and books.
Her most recent book is WordsWorth Using Supporting
Adolescence Power with AcademicVocabulary, published by
(01:17):
Teachers College Press in 2022.
In it, she offers practicalsupport for adolescents'
vocabulary development to learnwords by using them in ways that
are meaningful to theiridentity, language, background
and interests.
At University of Nevada, reno,dr Diana Townsend is the program
coordinator of the LiteracyStudies Program within the
(01:38):
College of Education and HumanDevelopment.
For more information about ourguest, stay tuned to the end of
this episode.
So pour a cup of your favoritedrink and join me.
Your host Lindsay Persaud forClassroom Caffeine research to
energize your teaching practice.
Diana, thank you for joining me.
(01:59):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm so glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
So, from your own experiences in education, will
you share with us one or twomoments that inform your
thinking now?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I would love to.
When I get asked a questionlike this, I just immediately go
to work that I do with studentsin the K-12 space.
So I've been a researcher hereat UNR for 17, 18 years now but
a lot of my research brings meback to K-12 classrooms and
that's where I just learned themost, working with students.
(02:33):
So about 12 years ago I wasworking in a middle school for
an entire year and working withstudents and teachers, primarily
supporting teachers.
But one of the things we did aspart of that project was we ran
focus groups with students.
These were middle schoolstudents, primarily multilingual
(02:54):
learners, and the work we weredoing with teachers was focused
on supporting their academicvocabulary development and
trying different things in theclassroom within content areas,
across content areas that wouldsupport multilingual learners,
development of academic wordknowledge.
And we ran these focus groupsof students and we showed them
videos of lessons that theyparticipated in and we asked
(03:16):
them to stop the video anytimethey wanted to share something
about what their experiences waslike during those lessons.
And the students had to stopthe lessons at such interesting
places and they would tell usthings like that was really
confusing.
I didn't understand what washappening there or that word was
too hard for me or I didn'treally know what I was supposed
(03:37):
to do there and for the teachersand for me to listen to the
students reflect on their ownexperiences in the lessons
related to these specificimportant concepts we were
trying to help them learn was sopowerful, and it was.
I had done work along theselines before, but that one, that
particular year, really standsout to me.
I don't know that there'sanything more important than
(03:58):
listening to students tell uswhat is and isn't working for
them, what is and is not clearfor them, when they feel
empowered to play with a concept, to build deep knowledge of a
concept, to use their knowledgeof that concept in writing or
discussion, versus when theyjust needed more support than
they were getting.
And then, similarly, just a fewyears ago, I was on sabbatical
and I was teaching high schoolfull time, again as part of my
(04:19):
sabbatical, and I was testing areading comprehension
intervention that I haddeveloped.
Sabbatical, and I was testing areading comprehension
intervention that I haddeveloped and we focused on
words as tools for supportingreading comprehension,
specifically connectives, thosereally interesting connective
words you know, often known astransition words or signal words
.
And so we were supporting highschool multilingual learners.
They were designated aslong-term English learners and
(04:43):
they were playing with all thesewords and we set up enough
instructional routines wherethey were in control of which
connectives go where and why inspecific sentences, and
connectives tell us reallyimportant things about how ideas
are related to each other in asentence.
So for the students to engage inthat work where they were
deciding and they were debatingand they were negotiating,
(05:04):
negotiating and they were somepretty heated arguments about is
that a, however, or afurthermore, which goes here and
why?
Just stepping back and lettingthe students be in charge of
word choice and message.
Again, it kind of echoed thatearlier work I had done in the
middle school where we reallyneed to build in a lot of
opportunities in teaching,learning and research to let
(05:26):
students show us what is andisn't working, and so that's
kind of always been intuitive tome.
But I've had these couple ofexperiences where it's just it's
just really been hammered homethat at my peril should I set up
a project and not listen to thestudents?
And I don't think anybody eversays we shouldn't listen to
students, but it's easy to runout of time and so it's just
(05:48):
kind of always front and centerfor me.
We need to prioritize that.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
I love both of these stories and, in fact, as you
were talking about that firstmethodology of having students
watch back something they've hadan experience of and pausing it
, I think that is so powerfulbecause, you're right, what we
anticipate as being the mostimportant things aren't always
the most important things toyoung people, so I love that
idea of asking them about whathas been most impactful, what's
(06:14):
been most confusing for them and, as you were telling those,
diana, you used a term thatlisteners may not be fully
familiar with, and that's theidea of a long-term English
learner.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Can you tell us, share with us, what that means?
I can, yeah, and fulldisclosure.
I find that label reallyproblematic and not super
helpful for students.
So the definition of along-term English learner it can
vary, but in general it's amultilingual learner who's been
designated as an English learnerfor longer than five to seven
years.
So when I my students when Iwas teaching high school were
multilingual learners about 80%of them were born in the US and
(06:51):
had all of their language ofinstruction had been English,
but they were still designatedas English learners after
multiple years of receivingEnglish language development
services.
So their label had switchedfrom EL or English learner, to
LTEL or long-term Englishlearner, and there's a lot of
baggage in that label.
That again doesn't really helpstudents.
But in our field I think it'simportant when we recognize that
(07:16):
we're working with groups ofkids who have been designated,
which has caused them to begrouped in certain ways, and so
I think it's important for us torecognize how kids are being
labeled.
But I'll tell you what thosestudents were anything but
monolithic in their language andtheir knowledge and their
engagement and their interestand their readiness for
different topics, and so thatlabel can have very much a
(07:39):
deficit model with it, but thestudents I worked with stand in
direct contrast to any of thekind of the assumptions that
someone might make about thatlabel.
Long term English learner.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
I really appreciate that and I don't know if I've
never heard it before, so Idon't know if that's a label
that's not used in the statethat I'm working in, or maybe
because I my school experienceis largely in elementary.
Maybe we just never had anyonewho who had that label.
Maybe we just never had anyonewho had that label.
But I can certainly agree withyou that it may not be the most
(08:10):
helpful thing in the world forkids because, right, what does
that actually mean and what kindof light does that portray
those students in?
Yeah, very interesting andcertainly something I will do a
little bit more reading about,because, yeah, I can imagine
that just wouldn't be superhelpful for a teacher to have,
you know, a student come with alabel like that, and certainly
not helpful for the child.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
No, no, and the teachers I've worked with
consistently have kind of justignored assumptions and some of
the deficit orientations ofmodels, and so this just seems
to be like a function of thesystem we work in and how do we
schedule kids and how do we getkids in the right classes, and
but yeah, there's a lot.
There's a lot of kind ofnegative side effects of that.
(08:52):
And to learn more about this, Ihighly recommend the work of
Manica Brooks.
She has a great book thattackles the issues with long
term English learners.
Her work has influenced minequite a lot but she's a good
person to learn from on thistopic learners.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Her work has influenced mine quite a lot, but
she's a good person to learnfrom on this topic.
Great, great, we'll locate thatbook and we can also link that
in your show notes as well.
Great, oh yeah, thank you somuch, and I appreciate the
reference to a work that couldhelp us to really understand
what that term means and whatthe potential implications of it
might be.
And maybe that's something thatyou know.
Whenever I was a young teacher,like, let's say, 20 years ago,
I didn't necessarily understandthe impact of how kids are
(09:28):
labeled within the confines ofschool and what that exactly
means to how they're viewed or,like you said, how they're
grouped, how they sort of movethrough school and cohorts, and
also certainly how that wouldlimit things like their language
development in really odd ways,because I think that the
intention is to support languagedevelopment but it doesn't
actually play out that way.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, it's so true.
In my book I highlight the workI did in this high school.
My recent book, words WorthUsing, I highlight the work I
did in this high school, andevery chapter starts with a
vignette tells stories aboutstudents who again, kind of are
in direct contrast to theselabels that often have deficit
orientations.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
So, Diana, what do you?
What do you want listeners toknow about your work?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
So my work has largely been focused on word
level knowledge and what itmeans to know a word and
different kinds of words thatstudents encounter in school and
out of school.
And vocabulary knowledge iscritical.
It just predicts so much.
It predicts readingcomprehension, it predicts
academic achievement in mostcontent areas.
(10:34):
It actually predicts all sortsof life outcomes.
That might be becausevocabulary knowledge is a proxy
or a substitute for knowledge ingeneral or for reading
comprehension in some ways.
But word knowledge, the wordswe know, that knowledge really
comprises a whole set ofbuilding blocks that we need to
make sense of the world and thetexts we encounter in it.
(10:56):
So vocabulary knowledge iscritical.
At the same time, the idea ofvocabulary for the sake of
vocabulary is something wefrankly don't have time for in
schools.
So learning words just for thesake of learning new words, or
because vocabulary is somethingI kind of, you know, need to get
my vocabulary in for the weekthat we can move away from
Providing students withintentional opportunities to
(11:17):
learn words that really matter,for what they're learning is how
we need to be oriented towardvocabulary instruction.
When I think about working with, for example, my pre-teachers,
I say to them what do you wantkids walking out the door being
able to do today that theycouldn't do when they walked in,
right so, just what you know?
What's a strong learningobjective?
And then I say what words dokids need to know to meet that
(11:39):
objective?
That's, that's what should bedriving our vocabulary work.
Not here's my list of 20 words.
I did my vocabulary.
But what words do students needto be able to use to meet the
worthwhile learning objectiveswe're putting in place for them?
So that's kind of the bigtakeaway from a lot of my work.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Well, one thing that it really made me think of this
idea of how we should approachteaching vocabulary in
classrooms.
It reminds me a bit of how weshould teach spelling as well.
We don't teach words for thesake of teaching words.
We teach them in a context thathas meaning and that is
interconnected, and I think thatwhen it comes to planning for
classroom instruction, when itcomes to looking at trajectories
(12:17):
of learning, I find those kindsof concepts so helpful in
knowing what's most importantand how do we actually spend the
time the very limited time thatwe have with students.
Vocabulary is so important, butit must be connected to ideas
and things that we're learningand not approached in this sort
of isolated kind of here's theword list for this week.
(12:38):
I'm hoping that you might offerus a few strategies or tips or
things that you've learned overthe years as to how we can
really make that kind ofvocabulary learning most
impactful or most relevant forour students.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Absolutely.
I think once we know what wehope students are going to walk
away with from a lesson andwe've identified a few central
concepts that are reallycritical for that particular
objective, then we get to do thefun work of playing with words
and we get to think about wordmeanings.
We get to think about wordmeanings, we get to think about
word parts and we get to thinkabout using words in ways that
(13:13):
are relevant to our students'lives, that they get to connect
words to their own lives andthat they get to connect the
words to that kind of the biggerpicture of whatever they're
studying.
And so that boils down to somepretty key principles of
vocabulary instruction that arekind of decades of research have
borne this out.
So multiple opportunities topractice using words,
(13:36):
personalized word meanings,multiple opportunities to learn
about how words play out indifferent contexts, explicit
instruction so student-friendlydefinitions, lots of visuals,
lots of examples andnon-examples all of that kind of
builds this deep word knowledgeof central concepts.
That should be kind of guidinghow we think about vocabulary
(13:57):
instruction.
And then another piece is wordconsciousness.
We can also say metalinguisticawareness, which I talk a lot
about in my recent book.
But this word consciousness orthis awareness of how words work
and this curiosity about wordsand paying attention to things
like roots and affixes that showup in multiple words and
(14:18):
wondering does it mean the samething here?
Is it means over there?
Fostering that wordconsciousness can really support
independent word learning.
We can't, as teachers, teachkids every word they need to
know or they're going to learnin school.
If we try, it's a fool's errand.
We cannot do that.
So we want to balance ourinstruction between this
language-rich environment thatfosters a lot of word
(14:41):
consciousness and curiosity andattention to words, and then, at
the same time, within thatlanguage-rich environment, we've
picked our central conceptsthat students need for the task
at hand, and when we do both,we're giving students
opportunities to learn a lot ofwords incidentally, not toward
mastery, but just learn a littlebit more about a lot of
different words.
(15:01):
But we're also very clear onwhat we want.
We're helping them developownership of what concepts we
want to help them developownership of.
Now.
What does that look like?
You know what types ofinstruction or routines help
kids develop ownership of whatconcepts we want to help them
develop ownership of.
Now.
What does that look like?
What types of instructionalroutines help kids develop
ownership.
Well again, I kind of come backto this less is more space all
the time.
We don't need 50 or 100vocabulary games or routines.
(15:21):
Those are fine, they're fun,but we don't really need them.
We need some high utilityroutines that we can integrate
in all the other things we'redoing A concept map, also called
a semantic map.
I've also called it ametalinguistic map.
A lot of folks would be veryfamiliar with this.
We've got the word in themiddle, we've got some bubbles
around the side and each ofthose bubbles has a different
(15:43):
type of or different dimensionof meaning for that particular
word, right.
So we could have thestudent-friendly definition.
We could have a technicaldefinition.
Another bubble might have themorphology, the roots and
affixes.
Another bubble for ourmultilingual learners might have
cognates or translations.
We might have a bubble wherestudents get to sketch something
(16:05):
that's meaningful for them inrelation to that word.
We might have a bubble wherestudents are making a connection
between that word and whatthey're currently studying.
Some words are great forsynonyms and antonyms Not all
words, like photosynthesis, forexample, does not have really a
synonym or an antonym.
So we can think about a conceptmap being adaptable and using
different dimensions of wordknowledge for different words,
(16:27):
depending on what we're havingstudents do.
Now, one key thing about agreat tool like concept maps is
we wouldn't have students create40 of them, you know, for like
a 40 word vocabulary packet.
That would start to feel likebusy work.
It'd be not very meaningful.
So we've pared down a short setof words that are critical for
kids to really learn and then weuse concept maps for them.
(16:47):
And they go back to the conceptmap.
Oh, there's that word,photosynthesis.
Again, we practiced that lastweek.
Let's pull out our concept map.
What else can we add to ourconcept map that we just learned
today about that?
And so it becomes a kind of adocument that documents their
growing, deepening, developingword knowledge.
So it's a living document forthem.
(17:08):
So that's one great highutility routine that, once we've
selected our central concepts,we can help students really
develop deep knowledge of them.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Thank you for that, because I think that you know,
we know that teachers get a lotof information and they get a
lot of directives from a lot ofdifferent spaces.
And so I think, whenever we canprovide these sort of high
utility kinds of concepts and Ilove the idea of using a concept
map or a semantic map in kindof tailored ways I even
envisioned, you know, yourconcept map could include, you
(17:41):
know, four of these eight to 10options, right, and then giving
kids a way to sort of tailorthat and make it their own based
on the mode that they learnbest in.
And then, of course, you couldcreate, like a classroom
semantic map based on all thosedifferent options.
So you gave me a lot of reallyconcrete ideas about how we
could use what I feel like is avery familiar concept, a very
(18:02):
familiar idea about how to teachvocabulary in a really fresh
and relevant and tailored sortof way.
So I appreciate that, diana,great.
So what else would you likelisteners to know about your
work?
Speaker 2 (18:15):
I think that one of the things I learn over and over
again as a researcher is theexisting research is a great
place to start and it guides alot of what I do when I'm either
teaching students or starting anew study in schools.
But the research only gets usso far.
There's no perfect study outthere that gives us anything
that's one size fits all.
(18:35):
Now, those earlier principlesof vocabulary instruction I
mentioned.
There's a lot of research tosupport those.
We can't really go wrong whenwe're abiding by those
principles, but how they playout in any given class with any
given group of students is goingto vary pretty, pretty widely.
So I think it's important forall of us to think about let's
(18:56):
start with the research and thenlet's let the kids tell us
where to go next.
And that doesn't mean I kind ofthrow the research out if
something isn't working withstudents, but I think, okay, the
research worked in this settingwith these students.
It's not working here with mine.
What do I need to dodifferently?
What other research do I needto bring in?
How do I need to go back tothat research and recognize that
it's not the perfect fit foreither my objectives or my
(19:17):
setting?
Speaker 1 (19:19):
What it made me think about is how research is being,
in many instances and in manysettings, really heavy-handedly
given to teachers, where they'reforced to sort of follow it to
the letter when it may not applyto their individual learners
and to me, that's actually areally important point, because
I think that that's one way thatthe story, the message in
(19:41):
education has gotten reallytwisted is that narrow
interpretation of what researchis.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, it's just my two cents.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
The context of the research matters and the context
of how it initially came intopublication, as well as the
context in which it's translated.
Because, again, I think that sooften in education we think we
have the thing that's going tofix everything and then it is
sort of forced upon teachers inways that aren't always
(20:11):
productive.
And I think that theencouragement to go back to the
research to say, well, what didit actually say, or what was the
context in which the study wasconducted, I think that's very
helpful, especially if you areup against a concept that is, in
air quotes, supposed to workand you're not seeing evidence
(20:31):
of that in your own area, right?
So I think that there'ssomething really important in
what you've told us about how webecome savvy consumers of
research yeah, it reminds me ofthe story you started with.
Is that we've got to find outwhat are the kids telling us,
what are our students telling us, what is our own experience
telling us and how does thatinform particular angles that we
(20:54):
play up from research or how wego back to other potential
research sources in order tobecome better informed and to
better implement the big ideasthat other people have found
through research.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yeah, right now I'm teaching middle school almost
every day as part of a currentproject and I'm designing
lessons and implementing themand I am abiding by everything
the research says should work.
And it's just so much messierthan that, and I think we really
need to use the research,attend to the research and leave
(21:28):
a lot of room for growth inwhat else needs to happen
besides what the research says,and also acknowledge that every
statistically significantresearch study won't apply to
every single situation out there, and so we need to be open
about incorporating otherresearch or re-examining our own
practices to see did I reallyalign them to the research or
(21:50):
not?
And so it's just a greatintellectual journey anytime
we're thinking aboutresearch-based or
research-informed instruction,and I think staying open and
reading the research carefullyand then staying open and
curious is a good pathwayforward.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah, I totally agree .
Another thing that that made methink of is the fact that
whenever we are writing upresearch, there are a lot of
ideas that don't make the cut.
And there's, you know, right,there's this I think of.
You know, the thinking process,the research process is often
iterative, it is messy, it iscomplex, and then what we see in
(22:25):
a publication is in a linearwriting format, and so a lot of
the messiness is necessarilytrimmed away just because of the
mode of communication.
Isn't really a form that allowsus to sort of double back on
ideas, to create a lot ofcaveats or parenthetical kinds
(22:45):
of notes, much like you can in aconversation or as you would if
you were talking about theresearch you're doing with
someone.
It doesn't translate the sameway into writing, and so I think
that that's another importantthing for us to keep in mind as
we translate research intopractice is that reanimating
that from.
You know, a two-dimensionalblack and white kind of print is
very different than probablyhow it started and certainly how
(23:07):
it ends, and I think that youknow.
In that, I think there's somegrace to be found about how we
interpret what we see and how welike.
To your point.
How are we ensuring that, ifwe're looking to get the same
results that a research studydid, do we have the same
conditions?
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Absolutely, absolutely.
I really appreciate your pointabout what's kind of lost in
traditional researchpublications that could be
really informative for the field, and I think that's the
conversations and collaborationsthat happen in spaces like this
and between researchers andteachers.
Those are some of the mostgenerative spaces to push our
field forward.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, I totally agree .
I think that as a classroomteacher, and certainly as a
beginning researcher, I maybewasn't fully aware of just how
messy that work can be and howmuch of that mess is cleaned up
in the final products that wesee.
So I think that, like I said,it's helpful for early
(24:08):
researchers, practitioners, tounderstand that that's cut away
during the writing process.
It's sort of ever present inthe research process, because
anytime you're working withhumans, things are going to be a
little messy.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Definitely, and it's one of the most fun parts of it
all, but it doesn't see thelight of day as often as it
should.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
So is there anything else you would like to share
about your work, Diana?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
One more thing that's a little more focused that I'd
love to just speak quickly to isthe importance of morphology,
so understanding roots andaffixes and how they tell us
good information about whatwords mean and how they help us
make connections across words.
It's it's one of I think maybeone of the more under leveraged
(24:52):
tools out there to supportstudents, especially older
readers who may have historiesof reading difficulty.
Morphology is a great way in tosupporting both word level
reading as well as knowledge ofindividual words, and then we've
got these nice bridges tocomprehension, and so morphology
is just a pretty powerful spacefor all of us to learn in, and
(25:14):
to that end, there's greatresources out there for all of
us to learn more aboutmorphology.
I feel like in the last decadeI started knowing kind of the
expected amount of Greek andLatin roots and that type of
thing, and as I've done deeperand deeper dives, you just get
more and more curious.
Rarely do I hear a word withoutwondering where'd that come
from, and so it's a fun learningcurve to be on, and I get the
(25:38):
sense sometimes from teachersthat I work with that they don't
really feel ready to dig intothat with their students, that
they haven't had the 10 yearsI've had to explore this stuff
and I totally respect that.
I actually felt that way as ahigh school English teacher that
I didn't know enough.
I just want to put out therethat one of the things I've
learned is it's really okay andfun to learn with your students.
There's great tools out therewhen a word comes up or a
student has a question about aword, or, as a teacher, I
(25:59):
recognize a word part but I'mnot really know enough about it
to teach it.
There's these great resourcesonline where you can just spend
a couple minutes with yourstudents looking back at roots,
where they came from throughhistory and then make
connections to other words, andso that's a great way to
integrate vocabulary learningbecause you're paying attention
to these meaningful word parts.
Vocabulary learning becauseyou're paying attention to these
meaningful word parts, it's agreat way to support students
(26:23):
reading of multisyllabic andmorphologically complex words
and it doesn't take a lot ofinstructional time or planning.
So I'd be happy to share moreresources on that in the show
notes or anywhere that might behelpful.
But morphology is a reallypowerful tool that I think
there's enough evidence that'ssaying, yeah, let's go big with
this.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
I love that.
I love what you're saying,diana, and absolutely, if you
have resources to share, wewould be happy to post a list of
links there.
Because, yeah, morphologicalinstruction I think really is
key to maintaining thatcuriosity about words,
particularly as learners getolder, but also really to hand
that over right, so that we doin fact have young people in
(27:06):
schools who become young adults,and then adults who are still
curious about words, who aremaybe doing the crossword puzzle
every week.
Or they hear a word or they seea word and they still go, huh,
I wonder where that came from,and then they go back to a
source in order to learn moreabout it.
And the other thing I think yousaid that's really key here,
that I think is hard for a lotof teachers is being okay with
(27:30):
not knowing everything aboutsomething you're going to teach,
and I just really appreciatethat sort of permission that I
think we have to give ourselvesreally over and over again to
say you can't be an expert ineverything.
Right, and sometimes the bestteaching really happens in the
moment.
When you and your studentsencounter a word, you think, huh
, I know what it means, but I'mnot sure where it came from.
(27:52):
I'm not sure how we arrived atthis particular form or usage of
this word.
Let's look that up together,because I think we're also in
those moments, modeling foryoung people how to be a
lifelong learner of new words.
Yeah, I really love that Great.
So, diana, given the challengesof today's educational climate,
(28:12):
what message do you wantteachers to hear?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
When it comes to creating opportunities for
students to learn words, I thinkit's okay to begin with the
idea that less is more.
We do have limitedinstructional time and we have a
lot of challenges facingstudents and teachers in
classrooms.
And when we are really clear onwhat we want a given lesson or
unit of study to do and we knowwhat small number of concepts
(28:39):
are central for that goal, wedon't have to worry about
fitting in time for the longlist of words.
We just integrate meaningfulwork with those concepts
throughout different learningactivities.
It's a bit of a misnomer,however, to say less is more,
because when you do deep divesinto a few concepts, you're
(29:02):
supporting word knowledge oflots of related words for those
concepts, right?
So in science, for example, wemight be thinking about the word
astronomy.
When we help students do a deepdive into the word astronomy,
we have opportunities to helpthem connect to things they
already know or build newknowledge about things like
telescopes, different forms ofthe word astronomy, like
(29:25):
astronomer, we might get intothe life cycle of stars and get
into nebula and supernovas andthose types of words.
Think about well-knownastronomers that have made
important contributions to thefield and build deep knowledge
of the word astronomy.
That, along the way, buildsdeveloping knowledge maybe not
(29:46):
mastery, but developingknowledge of lots of other words
and concepts.
That looks really differentfrom a list of here's 20 words
on astronomy to learn it's we'regoing to develop knowledge,
deep concept knowledge ofastronomy, and you're going to
pick up lots of other wordknowledge along the way.
So starting with less is moredoesn't mean students are having
fewer opportunities to learn alot of words.
It's just much more organizedand clear for them.
(30:06):
They're building deep knowledgeof the concepts that matter
most, building kind ofincidental or peripheral
knowledge of a lot of otherterms that they'll be able to
recognize down the road.
And so it lets us know asteachers, we're doing our job
pretty well, even though, no, Ididn't teach my students deep
knowledge of 40 concepts thisweek.
That was never going to happenanyway and so I've instead given
(30:29):
them really meaningfulopportunities to build deep word
knowledge that gives themtraction going forward in these
fields or topics we're learningabout.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
What an important message, and I think in my mind
it helps us cut through some ofthe noise of what instruction is
supposed to look like, and Iknow even in my instruction now
that becomes so important toknow what to emphasize and what
to focus on, and I love the ideaof how we sort of organically
bring other words along that arerelated to a central concept.
(31:01):
That becomes a part of thecollective conversation in a
classroom.
That really gives so muchweight, I think, to those
conversations whenever they aredriven by students, kind of back
to where this conversationstarted right, listening to the
young people that we're workingwith and understanding what do
they want, what do they see,what are they interested in,
(31:22):
what confuses them, what iscrystal clear to them and how do
we get there.
Well, thank you for yourcontributions to the field of
education and thanks so much forspending some time with me
today.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure.
This was a lot of fun.
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Dr Diana Townsend's research centers on the language
development of adolescents,with specific attention to
vocabulary.
She examines both the uniquelanguage demands of the
disciplines and effectiveinstructional strategies to help
students understand and use thelanguage of the disciplines the
(32:00):
Elementary School Journal, theJournal of Adolescent and Adult
Literacy, reading and Writingand Interdisciplinary Journal
and Topics in Language Disorders, as well as other journals and
multiple books.
Her most recent book, wordsWorth Using Supporting
Adolescence Power with AcademicVocabulary, was published by
Teachers College Press in 2022.
Dr Townsend's research has beenfunded by the Spencer
Foundation and the Institute ofEducation Sciences at the US
(32:22):
Department of Education.
She serves as a principalmember of the Education Research
Scientific Review Panel withthe Institute of Education
Sciences.
She's also a member of theReading Standing Committee for
the National Assessment ofEducation Progress.
Assessment of EducationProgress In Nevada.
(32:42):
Dr Townsend is the co-founderand president of the Nevada
Adolescent Literacy Network andthe lead author of the Nevada
State Literacy Plan.
Diana is a winner of theUniversity of Nevada Reno's
Tibbets Distinguished TeacherAward.
She created the InnovativeVirtual Reading Clinic in the
online Masters of Educationprogram in reading curriculum
and instruction to supportremote and rural teachers in a
(33:04):
graduate-level practicumexperience Within the College of
Education and Human Developmentat UNR, dr Townsend is the
program coordinator of theLiteracy Studies program.
Check out the show notes forlinks to resources mentioned in
this episode.
For the good of all students,classroom Caffeine aims to
(33:26):
energize education, research andpractice.
If this show gives you thingsto think about, help us spread
the word.
Talk to your colleagues andeducator friends about what you
hear.
You can support the show bysubscribing, liking and
reviewing this podcast throughyour podcast provider.
Visit classroomcaffeinecom,where you can subscribe to
(33:48):
receive our short monthlynewsletter, the Espresso Shot.
On our website, you can alsolearn more about each guest,
find transcripts for ourepisodes, explore topics using
our dropdown-down menu of tags,request an episode topic or
potential guest, support ourresearch through our listener
survey or learn more about theresearch we're doing on our
(34:09):
publications page.
Connect with us on social mediathrough Instagram, facebook and
Twitter.
We would love to hear from you.
Special thanks to the ClassroomCaffeine team Leah Berger,
abaya Valuru, stephanie Bransonand Shaba Oshfath.
As always, I raise my mug toyou, teachers.
Thanks for joining me.
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