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Glossary

Absurdity

 something that would not be considered part of what is reasonable or normal

Adjective

 a word that describes a person, place or thing (big, small, huge, red)

Appropriate

 suitable or correct for a particular purpose or conversation

Auditory input

 to hear

Book Embedded Vocabulary Instruction

 a strategy that incorporates language and vocabulary instruction in the classroom

Chorally

 a group of children responding all together

Context

 the setting or where the story or situation takes place

Contextualize

 connected to something the children are doing

Converse

 to discuss or have a conversation between two or more persons

Descriptive

 detailed words used to describe objects or situations that build oral language skills

Dialogic Reading

 a strategy that enhances vocabulary and oral language skills using realistic illustrations in children’s books

Dialogue

 conversation between two or more people

Differentiates

 to have the ability to tell the difference between two or more concepts

Elicit – to draw or bring out (a response, for example)

 

Enhance

 to increase or build upon

Ensure

 to guarantee or make sure

Expansion

 the act of adding more descriptive words to a simple word or phrase in order to increase vocabulary development

Facilitate

 to support or encourage vocabulary development by increasing the amount of vocabulary children are exposed to throughout the day

Fast mapping

 a way children learn vocabulary that begins with a child hearing a word, obtaining the word’s meaning from someone or something, and remembering that first impression of the word by which all other definitions and situations will be compared

Function

 the purpose for which something is designed or exists

Implement

 to incorporate or to carry out

Intentional teaching

 a deliberate creation of contexts and situations in which to teach new vocabulary

Label

 a short word or phrase descriptive of a person, group, or object

Language Scaffolding

 a strategy that utilizes every opportunity during the school day to enhance language and vocabulary development

Model

 teacher overtly demonstrates a strategy, skill, or concept that children will be learning

Multi word statements

oral statements using many words including some new vocabulary words and descriptive words to build children’s oral language skills

Narrative

 a story about fictional or real events

Noun

 person, place or thing (teacher, Florida, pencil, plate)

Open ended questions

questions that encourage many different responses to allow children to practice their language skills

Oral Language

 spoken language

Ordinary

 the normal or expected

Paraphrase

 a restatement of a text or passage giving the meaning in another form for clearness

Plot

 storyline; the plan, scheme, or main story of book

Promote

 to encourage through action

Prompt

 to assist (a person speaking) by suggesting something to be said

Referent

 the word that is chosen to be defined

Refine

 make more precise or increase depth of knowledge regarding the topic

Scaffold

  the process of teacher modeling and providing appropriate support to help a child acquire a skill or knowledge (e.g. giving clues, asking questions, providing verbal prompts)

Spontaneous

 coming from a natural tendency; without effort; natural and unplanned

Strategize

 to make up or determine a strategy or plan

Summarize

 reducing large selections of text to their bare essentials: the gist, the key ideas, the main points that are worth noting and remembering

Tactile input

 to feel

Think, Show, Tell, Talk

 a strategy that promotes language and vocabulary development by using a specific routine to label objects or actions during daily classroom routines

Utterance

 real or nonsense words or sounds that a child says

Verb

 expresses action (run, hop, jump, leap)

Visual input

 to see

Verbatim

 exactly the same words; word for word

Word knowledge

 the mental dictionary / thesaurus or the words in one’s head that are used to figure out what is going on in the world

World knowledge

 the experiences one has in his/her life that one learns from that develop vocabulary