Using the Cognitive Content Dictionary to Develop "Word Attack" Skills

Today we modeled the cognitive content dictionary from Project GLAD with English learners in a third grade bilingual classroom during ELD time. The students were at varying levels of proficiency in English, ranging from beginning to advanced levels.

We first wrote the words "ecologist" and asked students who had heard the words before (h) and who had not heard the word before (nh). Then we asked students to "put their heads together" in a cooperative group and make a prediction about the meaning of the word. We called on a representative to tell us what prediction their team came up with, and asked what clues they used to make that prediction.

As you can see in the picture, the first group predicted that the word ecologist meant "scientist". When we asked what helped them make that prediction, they told us that the word had the ending "-ist" and it reminded them of scientist. The second group informed us that they thought ecologist was a signal for something because they had heard us say by accident, "When you hear the word ecologist, I want you to..." The third group told us that they thought that the word meant "college" because it "sounded like the word college". Another group expressed a similar prediction stating that it must be a scientist who went to college. The final group informed us that they predicted that it meant "knowledge" because the part "olog" in the word sounded like the word "knowledge".

Throughout the lesson we read about ecologists and pointed out the word in poems and the book. Tomorrow we will ask students to tell us the meaning of the word and then we will conduct word analysis on the word, explaining that "eco" means "environment", "ologist/ology" means "one who studies __ or the study of ___", and "-ist" means "a person who".

From our initial modeling it was clear that the students already had word consciousness, because many of them noticed and analyzed the word parts in order to aid them in predicting the meaning of the word.
cognitive content dictionary, eld, english language development, project glad, glad strategies
Why do we write down predictions, even if they are not correct?
It's important that students begin to make their own predictions about words, based on context clues or morphological analysis of word parts. If we always give students the meanings to vocabulary, when will they ever learn to have the word attack skills necessary to predict the meanings of words? As teachers we need to sometimes explicitly tell students the meaning to certain vocabulary words, but at other times we also need to assist students with learning how to become "word detectives" and figure out the meaning of the word on their own. At times it is necessary for students to make their own predictions and later return to confirm and revise their predictions.
eld, eld standards, the cognitive content dictionary is an eld strategy, eld strategies, eld
Why is it important to ask about the clues that they used to make the prediction?
It's important to model with students that there are various clues that we can use when trying to figure out the meaning of an unknown word. It's important that students become sophisticated with looking for prefixes, suffixes, root words, cognates and context clues that enable them to make a prediction about the meaning of a word. This takes considerable practice and teacher modeling in order for students to appropriate "word attack" skills and become proficient enough to use it on their own when reading independently.

When using an ELD strategy such as the cognitive content dictionary with English learners, it helps to sometimes choose words that might have prefixes, suffixes, roots words, etc in order for students to develop practice with morphological analysis of words. When you first begin to use the strategy, students might not have the sophistication necessary to verbalize which clues they used used to make the prediction. In this event, teachers can prompt students by using the following examples:

• Does the word remind you of another word? Does it look like a word that you know?
• Have you seen the word somewhere before?
  
• Did someone tell you what they thought the word meant?
• Did you just make a "wild guess"?

With enough practice and teacher modeling, many students will begin to independently use word attack skills on their own in order to determine the meaning of unknown words.
The cognitive content dictionary is an ELD strategy that can be used during ELD for vocabulary development. ELD means English language development.