Success Story: Ms. Wiedmann

Ms. Wiedmann: We are an academically oriented school, and these kids work really hard. Achievement is important to them. And they do Vocabulary.com because they know it is an expectation. We tell our students at the beginning of the year that the words on the academic vocabulary lists that we’re assigning on Vocabulary.com are going to be on their final exam. And they know that a lot of the words they’re expected to master are in the literature they’ll read.

W: Every week I assign a list that I’ve made — it’s a combination of academic vocabulary words that they need to learn at this level of high school, and some words that I pull from the literature they’ll be reading. I also use the literature lists that are tied to the books we’re reading. For example, my Honors English freshmen just read To Kill A Mockingbird, and for that book I used a combination of the Vocab.com lists and also my own customized versions of those. I assign the practice for homework on Monday and it’s due on Friday. I grade them on mastery, so they need to follow through until they have actually learned the words, and sometimes I quiz them.

W: For me, it’s not much planning time. If I decide to create my own lists that can take some time, but once I make those lists I have them in my “bank” on the website and then I just reuse those the next year. And each week I go to my dashboard and spend a few minutes using some of the students’ data for grading.

As far as in the classroom, I just can’t spend a lot of time on vocab, so for the students I’d say 90% of their practice — if not more — is done outside of the classroom. Sometimes I will allow them ten or fifteen minutes of class time as a sponge activity, but Vocabulary.com is primarily done as homework

W: With these kids, if you make something important, then they find it important. If you visit my class you’ll see it’s always written on the top of the board: “Vocab homework, due Friday!” And of course I’ll remind them throughout the week. If you as a teacher are consistent and show that something matters, your students will follow suit. So these kids know it’s part of their grade, plus they also know it’s something they really need to learn for its own sake.

And I do give some incentives, for example earning a few extra credit points if they achieve a certain amount of mastery on their assignments. It’s just a couple of points for their course grade, but it’s incentive enough for them to keep working towards mastery.

So we’ve clearly set those expectations for them, and now it’s just kind of embedded in the culture of our school, and in our department, and with individual teachers.

W: To be honest, as an English department we realized that if we wanted the platform to be funded, we need to use it as a team. We are all expected to teach vocabulary, but it’s not required that teachers use Vocabulary.com — the reason people bought into it is because there are a lot of benefits to it, like the way it allows you to assign and score work, the way you can create your own lists and use them again next year, or use the ones that are available on Vocab.com. And it’s easier than teaching vocabulary the old-fashioned way!

W: Well, from the beginning of my career I’ve always taught vocabulary because it’s very important. And our school has been committed to vocabulary instruction for at least twenty years, maybe more. But before this, using workbooks, it was very time consuming and a lot of work. Teaching with Vocabulary.com is a lot easier.

It also makes the literature more accessible for the kids. I assign the literature lists a week before we read the book, so by doing the practice ahead of time my students see those words multiple times in different contexts, and then when they see it in the reading they’re like, “OK, I get it!” As a teacher, I know this because I ask analytical questions to assess their understanding, and I ask questions about specific details in the book, and their responses show they get it.

The more you expose kids to vocabulary and the more you expose them to literature, the better their comprehension. You can’t do one without the other! So in effect what you’re doing is giving them a chance to be more successful. Giving them access to the vocabulary ahead of time makes the reading easier, and then they actually enjoy it because they get it.

W: You see an improvement in their written responses — their essays and their journal writing. And you hear it in their verbal responses when they utilize the words they’ve learned. When we have Socratic seminars they use the vocab words from the literature and use them in the correct context. It’s really neat to hear them! Sometimes you’re listening to these freshmen and you’re thinking, “Oh my gosh, you’re only 14!” Many of them are very eloquent. It’s so cool to see and hear the growth. Sometimes you get goosebumps!

W: They’re certainly aware that they’re number one in the Bowl, and the first year we used Vocabulary.com they paid more attention to the leaderboards, but to be honest I really don’t talk with my students about the Bowl much at all! They truly do the work because they know it’s necessary for their academic growth and they know it’s necessary to achieve their goals. They want to go to college.

W: Vocabulary acquisition definitely helps students with the PSAT, the SAT and other college examinations. Utilizing Vocabulary.com and giving them weekly access to those SAT-type words means they’re going to do better on those kinds of tests. I see that as a huge bonus with this approach, because I don’t have to spend class time to make sure they’re getting that important instruction — they can do it independently at home when they have time. They can do it on their phones, their tablets. It’s very accessible for them, and it’s just more fun!