October is Dyslexia Awareness Month, as well as ADHD Awareness Month! In this episode, Noble Academy’s Director of Educational Outreach, Aimee Gandee, helps parents of students who struggle with reading to support their child’s progress in developing vocabulary. See show notes for valuable resources suggested throughout this episode. #dyslexia #reading #vocabulary #parenting #home-school-connection #ProudToBeNoble
Resources mentioned:
Core Vocabulary Words: https://textproject.org/vocabulary-instruction/core-vocabulary
Academic Word List: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist/information/thesublists
Mini Matrix Maker: https://www.neilramsden.co.uk/spelling/matrix/
Academic Word Finder: https://achievethecore.org/page/1027/academic-word-finder
One Look Dictionary and Thesaurus: https://www.onelook.com/
Online Etymology Dictionary: https://www.etymonline.com/
Coh-Metrix Common Core Text Ease and Readability Assessor: https://soletlab.adaptiveliteracy.com:8443/
BONUS RESOURCE:
The Collins Cobuild dictionary provides student friendly definitions, and game-like challenges.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english
Connect with Aimee Gandee for tutoring or other questions:
https://www.nobleknights.org/tutoring
#dyslexia #reading #vocabulary #parenting #home-school-connection #ProudToBeNoble
GAYLE: At Noble Academy, parents know that they can count on our team of educators to ensure their children make academic progress, and that our teachers are highly trained for supporting the development of such skills as reading, writing, and vocabulary among many other skills. Sometimes Noble parents of dyslexic learners ask how they can best provide additional support at home, and today we have an expert to answer that question.
Aimee Gandee is Noble Academy’s Director of Educational Outreach. Aimee started at Noble 15 years ago, already with a background in public education and then special education. She also has a very personal connection with learning disabilities, having co-founded a school for learners with autism when her own son was young and not getting his needs adequately supported at school Her son is 23 now, and doing really great, as Aimee continues her work to support other students and their families by training teachers all over the country to use the Wilson Reading System. She also sits on the state board of the International Dyslexia Association here in North Carolina. I asked her what advice she might have for parents of students who struggle with reading, and we ended up talking at length about vocabulary building at home. Here is part of our conversation.
Aimee:
As we're teaching our students how to read, you know, we're teaching them how to decode words, how to figure out what the words say. We're teaching them how to spell the words, but we need to also be teaching vocabulary along the way. And what happens is when students are not strong readers, they miss out on general vocabulary that they pick up during the task of reading. So the development of vocabulary and kind of keeping up with age and grade appropriate vocabulary with them when they cannot read age and grade appropriate material is actually very critical.
So it's often vocabulary that breaks down understanding. And there's different types of vocabulary. So when, you know, when you think specifically about complex words, so those are words that are made up of morphological components that carry meaning. So like a prefix and a Latin base, a word like contact or connect or consist or disrupt or, disrupt. Those are all words that have word parts that carry meaning, and those are the types of words, complex words that, about they encompass about 60% of the words that kids above fourth grade encounter while reading in school.
So it's critical that they know these vocabulary words. And there's so much that you can do with vocabulary. I mean, beginning right in the home, what you're, you know, your children are marrying children mirror what they hear their parents talking about, the way that they hear their parents talking, the words that they use. So using high quality oral language in the home can make a big difference. Additionally, life experiences. So kids that have opportunities to get out into the community, to learn about new things, to travel, they're learning vocabulary all around them, that they can then apply to reading and understanding.
Additionally, you know, using things like, there's a website called the, it's the Mini Matrix Maker. And when I talk about word parts, like prefixes, Latin and Greek bases and suffixes, when you think about understanding what each of those individual pieces mean, they can apply that to a multitude of words. So if a student happens to know that the Latin based rupt means to break, then they can apply that to multiple words, disrupt, interrupt. And so they start to be able to take what they know about these small components and apply it to much larger words.
You know, you've got a set of prefixes. Let's say, miss, con, in, un, and ob, and then you have a Latin base like struct and the suffixes s, e, f, ed, and ing, you can make you can have the student try to make as many words as they can from those components. So they end up with misconstruct, misconstructs. Instruct, instructs.
Misinstructs. Misinstructs. Unobstructs. So, you know, adding those suffixes and those prefixes and those Latin bases, they start to really expand their knowledge for words. Some other resources, and this is more, this might be a little bit more academic, but, when you're the Isabel Beck's book, Bringing Words to Life, really breaks down vocabulary, for people in a way that, you know, kinda makes sense in that there's three tiers of words.
There are common words that students know that usually they don't require vocabulary instruction. There are words that are high utility, and then there are words that are more subject area or unique words. So spending instructional time on those, middle words, the words that are high utility, is where that time should be spent. Unique words can be covered in the context of what the student's reading. So parents just reading to their children, asking questions about whether they understand the words, and explaining them can make a big difference.
If they can't access it independently, it's important for them to still be able to hear it and understand it. So that way, as we're remediating that decoding and encoding piece, they're still having access to the content knowledge that they need to really understand text. So even audiobooks, you know, that doesn't take a whole lot of time on, you know, because parents work and they have constraints and they have after school activities and I get it. But, you know, if you can sit your child with an audiobook of high interest that they're gonna gain some new vocabulary out of, that can be a really quick and easy way to help your student make, you know, start really developing a large knowledge for words.
So finding things that you know that they're gonna enjoy, that they're going to listen to, they're going to get something out of. I would definitely be having those discussions with classroom teachers asking, you know, kind of what are they reading in class? What what are the recommendations does the teacher have on expanding that and choosing additional texts? You can level texts. There are certain websites where you can, like, paste text into an analyzer, and it'll tell you whether it's going to be understandable for students at certain grade levels, but I'd be looking at their Lexile. That also is gonna tell you what grade level they understand text at, but then can't but that's for reading. They can probably listen at a much higher level.
Gayle: I recall there were sites where people read books aloud, and it was videos of celebrities or actors reading books aloud. What do you think of those? Are there any that you like?
Aimee: You know, when I think about our summer professional read, we read ADHD is Awesome, and it was narrated by the authors. And that made a huge difference because their conversations in the audiobook, which I listened to, was, you know, it was so entertaining. And I think when you've got maybe celebrities reading books, especially if the student acclimates to the celebrity and really likes that particular celebrity, sports figure, anything like that, you know, that they're more likely to listen and it may be more enjoyable for them.
I think any way that you can, you know, bring it home for the student and tie it to their high interest, that's gonna make a difference.
Gayle: If you have any other sites, books, articles, games, or apps to recommend to families working on vocabulary development, I'd love to get a list from you.
Aimee: I mean, in terms of just knowing which words are important words to teach, the words that are the most used in the language would be on something called the core list, which that list can be found at textproject.org. Some of those words you might wanna focus on for vocabulary, maybe some are just more common words. But then when you compare that, with the academic word list, which is put out by Victoria University in New Zealand, that's an analysis of words that are found across all subject areas regardless of the subject, in college level texts.
And there's also an academic word list for middle school students if you're looking for something that's not quite as challenging for your student. There's a website called the academic word finder where you can paste a passage into, into the tool, and it will identify all of the academic words that are in there. So that might be something like if a student has a high interest in reading something and they've read a passage and you want to, you know, focus in on some particular words that are going to be highly useful for them, you can use that tool. And that one, the academic word finder is at, achievethecore.org. And then also there's, there's a one look dictionary so that's a great tool because you can put a word in and it'll tell you it'll show you all the dictionaries that it appears in and the different definitions of it.
So that's something else that they can explore. These are not necessarily games, but more tools for parents to be able to help their students because kids like to look things up. And one and another one that I really love is the online etymology dictionary. So often when words don't make the right sounds or they don't make the sounds they don't sound the way we think that they should or they have an obscure spelling, it has to do with the origin of the word. So one thing I've found just even in the classroom is when something doesn't make sense, if you look up the origin of the word with the student, then you find out why it says what it says and why it means what it means.And so that can be kind of a fun activity that that people can do with their children.
Gayle:
I think you've provided more, specific resources than any episode that we recorded yet. I'm going to try to make a list of all the resources that you've provided, and I'll give it to you and see if I've gotten everything down, and we'll put it in our show notes so that people don't have to replay the audio, but they can find it along with the audio on our podcast.
Aimee: I'd be happy to provide all the websites and all of those all of those pieces.
Gayle:
Is there anything about vocabulary that we didn't talk about, that I didn't ask about, that you that comes to mind that you'd like to share as we wrap up?
Aimee:
I just really want to stress that your children are really never too old to read to, and that they get so much out of it, and it really provides a connection for the family as well. So if you have that opportunity and, you know, just to continue to build vocabulary for them, that, you know, can definitely make a big difference in their lives.
Gayle:
I wonder if there are any anecdotes, memories, stories of how you have seen the advice you've just given play out for a particular learner or family.
Aimee:
So definitely, personally, I've had that experience both as a child and with my own children.
I remember being, you know, a 12 year old, and my mother was reading this book and she, and it was a Stephen King book. So she didn't want me to read it. And she was able to skip over the things that I probably shouldn't have been reading. But, she was reading it out loud to my sister and I and I was, you know, very capable of reading at that point in time. But I loved that time and that connection with her.
And, later on, you know, I did that for my own children. We read the whole entire Harry Potter series together. So I do think that, you know, making sure that you have that opportunity and that time with your kids can make a difference. And I know, you know, just being here at Noble for so long, talking with parents and parent conferences and, you know, and other situations, when you hear them talk about what their child is reading at home, what they're reading together at home, you can see that that connection, really is strong.
Gayle: That's wonderful.
Well, thank you so much, and, I appreciate you helping parents out as they help students develop their vocabulary.
We are so fortunate and so proud to have Aimee Gandee’s expertise here at Noble Academy. Not only does she make a tremendous contribution to the students and their families enrolled at our school, and not only does she train teachers all across the country, she also can help families from other schools find the tutoring support they need. If you or someone you know has more questions for Aimee, please reach out to her by phone or email. You can find her information on our website, nobleknights.org, and in our show notes.