Vocabulary for the Common Core. Robert J. Marzano
features. Other important features may depend on who or what the word refers to. For example, words that refer to people have different key features than words that refer to events. Table 2.2 shows seven types of words with accompanying questions that teachers can ask students to draw out key features for each word type; these types are not meant to be definitive but rather to help teachers and students think about words in various ways. This list is a simplified version of Marzano’s (2004) synthesis of vocabulary research (Marzano & Marzano, 1988; Stahl, 1999) and artificial intelligence research (Fellbaum, 1998; Miller, 1995) on various types of words.
Table 2.2: Features of Different Types of Words
| Types | Questions About Key Features |
| People(for example, author, character, villain, narrator, guest speaker, host, hostess, film director, political cartoonist) | 1. What actions does this kind of person perform?2. What is required to become this kind of person?3. What physical or psychological characteristics does this kind of person have? |
| Events(for example, play, interview, simulation, chance event) | 1. What people are associated with this kind of event?2. What process or actions are associated with this kind of event?3. What equipment, materials, resources, or contexts are associated with this kind of event?4. What setting is associated with this kind of event?5. What causes and consequences are associated with this kind of event? |
| Intellectual, artistic, or cognitive products(for example, essay, argument, tessellation, proof, model) | 1. What process is associated with this kind of product?2. What purpose is associated with this kind of product?3. What people are associated with this kind of product?4. What equipment is associated with this kind of product? |
| Mental actions(for example, revise, edit, reflect, problem solve, prove) | 1. What process is associated with this kind of mental action?2. What people are associated with this kind of mental action?3. What location is associated with this kind of mental action?4. What causes or consequences are associated with this kind of mental action? |
| Social/societal groups, institutions, or organizations(for example, audience, Modern Language Association, American Psychological Association, control group, representative sample, population) | 1. What purpose is associated with this kind of group, institution, or organization?2. What people are associated with this kind of group, institution, or organization?3. What setting is associated with this kind of group, institution, or organization? |
| Shapes/direction/position(for example, order of events, introduction, conclusion, polygon, coordinate plane, circumference, data distribution) | 1. What physical features are associated with this kind of shape, direction, or position?2. What uses are associated with this kind of shape, direction, or position?3. What reference points are associated with this kind of shape, direction, or position? |
| Quantities/amounts/measurements(for example, time frame, pacing, Roman numeral, cardinal number, greater than [>], function) | 1. What relationships are associated with this kind of quantity, amount, or measurement?2. What referents are associated with this kind of quantity, amount, or measurement? |
Source: Adapted from Marzano, 2004, pp. 81–84.
If a teacher was trying to explain the term function to her students, she might decide that the term fits best in the type quantities/amounts/measurements. In table 2.2, there are two questions for quantities/amounts/measurements:
1. What relationships are associated with this kind of quantity, amount, or measurement?
2. What referents are associated with this kind of quantity, amount, or measurement?
A teacher could use these questions to frame the class discussion of the term function. The teacher begins by explaining that a function expresses a relationship between two measurements. As one measurement changes, it affects the other measurement. The teacher then explains that different functions express different types of relationships: for example, linear functions refer to different kinds of relationships than quadratic functions.
Providing Examples
Description and explanation of a term must be accompanied by examples, such as the following:
• Experiences (field trips or guest speakers)
• Stories (personal experiences with the term)
• Images (videos, descriptions of mental pictures, or drawings)
• Drama (skits or pantomimes)
• Current events related to the term (news stories or magazine articles)
These techniques involve both linguistic and nonlinguistic ways of interacting with a term. Depending on the amount of time a teacher has, each of these types of examples can be extensive or brief. For instance, to highlight the first feature of function that the teacher identified (a function expresses a relationship between two measurements), the teacher tells students a story about how her mom taught her to cook rice. She explains that for every cup of rice, she had to add two cups of water, so two cups of rice needed four cups of water, three cups of rice needed six cups of water, and so on. She could visually graph the relationship between how many cups of water are needed for a specific number of cups of rice, as in figure 2.1, explaining that it is called a linear function because it creates a line on the graph.
Figure 2.1: Example of a linear function.
To highlight the other feature of function that she identified as important (different functions express different types of relationships), the teacher first reminds students of the phrase “the quality of the food is a function of how hungry you are” from their previous discussion and points out that the phrase means that the hungrier you are, the better food tastes. This approach requires relatively little time. If the teacher has more time, she could play a video that shows the frequency of sound waves at different pitches, pointing out that as the frequency increases, so does the pitch. Finally, she might ask students to mentally picture a group of basketball players lined up according to height and ask them to guess which ones weigh the most.
In summary, step 1 involves describing and explaining the important features of a term to students after determining what students already know about the term. Description and explanation of each important feature should be accompanied by examples of that feature. Depending on the amount of time a teacher wishes to spend in this first step, the examples can be abbreviated or more in depth.
Step 2: Ask Students to Restate the Description, Explanation, or Example in Their Own Words
Steps 2 and 3 of the process ask students to respond to the teacher’s description, explanation, or example of a new term by expressing it in their own way, both linguistically (step 2) and nonlinguistically (step 3). These steps are crucial to vocabulary learning because they ask students to actively process the new information provided by the teacher in step 1.
In step 2, the teacher asks students to record their own descriptions, explanations, or examples in their vocabulary notebooks. It is important that students do not simply copy the teacher’s description but instead think about how they would describe the new term and consider situations or circumstances in their own lives that exemplify the term. For example, a student defining the term function might write, “A function tells how one group of numbers is matched up with another group of numbers.” Another student might write, “Functions tell what happens to a measurement when another measurement changes.” At this stage, students’ descriptions and explanations may be rudimentary. This initial simplicity is to be expected and, as long as major errors or misconceptions are avoided, is acceptable during this step. As students explore a word and learn more about it, they can return to their initial explanations to refine, clarify, and add to them (this revision process is further explained in step 4).
Linguistic and