Vocabulary Trees: Making Vocabulary Visible and Holding Kids Accountable

I considered myself a decent reader in high school.  I read fluently for the most part, but I struggled with pronouncing new words and figuring out their meaning.  It was not until I was a freshman at college and signing up for a required language class (I chose Beginning Latin) that I realized the importance of roots in deducing the meaning of a word.  Suddenly I saw how the word “magnus” – meaning “large, great” in Latin – could help unlock the meaning of English words such as magnificent.

I like the approach of vocabulary trees in teaching students about roots and how they play a role in “how words work” (Beers 188).  I think that the vocabulary trees are effective because (1) The trees allow students to take charge of their own vocabulary (2) The trees provide a visual representation.

I think it can be hard to make vocabulary exciting.  Perhaps this uncertainty on how to engage students in building their vocabulary leads many a teacher to resort to the standard Friday vocabulary tests.  Kylene Beers argues that a good panacea to this dilemma is the vocabulary tree.  After the teacher provides a root word for a student to write in the trunk of the tree, the students then choose other words that share this same root to create branches of the tree.  The way in which students define these branch words adds yet another layer of accountability to the tree.  “Students define the word and copy a sentence that uses it.  This could be a sentence they heard, one they read, or one they said themselves” (Beers 189).  This method keeps students on alert – making them identify throughout the week other words sharing the root word of their vocabulary tree from a variety of different sources.  The process also links a student’s vocabulary with the real word and shows him how words are used in context.

As the tree grows it provides a real visual representation of how many words are interconnected.  “It’s a nice way of making this concept very concrete to students who often need those tangible connections” (Beers 190).  More than making visual the concept being taught, it also makes visual the progress a student makes.  As students add more words, it becomes a visual trophy of sorts.  The bigger the tree gets the more words a student knows.  The vocabulary tree becomes a reminder of how much a student has accomplished – helping him to learn and feel good about himself in the process.

  

Works Cited

Beers, Kylene. When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do:  A Guide for Teachers, 6-12. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2003. Print.