The Essential 25

Teaching the Vocabulary That Makes or Breaks Student Understanding

Marilee Sprenger

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781416630166
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

"Determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details; summarize the text." Your students may recognize the words determine, explain, and summarize in this standard, but would they understand and be able to apply these concepts?

Students encounter these and other academic vocabulary words throughout their school years, but too often, they don't have a firm grasp of these words' meanings or what skills they require.

Enter vocabulary expert Marilee Sprenger, who has curated a list of 25 essential high-frequency words that students must know to be academically successful, especially on standardized tests, and be ready for college and career. In this indispensable guide for all educators, she provides* Pre- and post-assessments to help you evaluate your students' understanding of the essential 25.
* A detailed entry for each word, including activities and strategies that will help students internalize the word's meaning and application.
* Retrieval games to help students practice the words in fun, engaging ways and reinforce the networks for those words in their brains.
* Downloadable blank templates for many of the strategies used throughout the book.

Every student needs to know and understand these words to perform at their best. If educators get behind this effort and make the essential 25 part of the fabric of their schools, students will be equipped to thrive in school and beyond.

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Chapter 1

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How the Brain Learns Vocabulary

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Almost 30 years ago, when I first began pursuing knowledge about how the brain learns, I heard a metaphor comparing the process of learning to the process of walking in the woods. The first time you walk through the woods, you stumble among the trees and brush, creating a rough, makeshift trail. The next time you take the same walk, the path becomes clearer; perhaps you have tamped down the vegetation on the ground and removed some branches or twigs that were in the way. As you continue to use the trail, it becomes even smoother and easier to traverse, enabling you to go faster. Over time, you're able to reach your destination without giving much thought to your direction; your path becomes automatic. Eventually, the path may become a paved highway, facilitating even faster travel. Perhaps some ramps and exits to other destinations pop up.

Sriram (2020) uses a similar metaphor to describe how the brain learns—as wearing a path in a field—and points out the important role played in this "paving" process by three key elements: neurons, synapses, and myelin.

• Neurons. Neurons are brain cells that both receive information (through dendrites) and send messages to other neurons (via the axon).
• Synapses. When we learn, neurons communicate with one another without touching; information is sent and received through the spaces, or synapses, that lie between neurons.
• Myelin. When neurons first begin communicating to form a thought or an action, they create a weak connection, like our initial makeshift path in the woods. In the beginning, the information does not flow quickly or easily, but when neurons practice wiring and firing together, the brain helps them form a "highway" through the use of myelin, a white fatty substance that coats the axons of the neurons. This process helps information move faster and stay on course.

Essentially, our goal as educators is to create learning highways in students' brains—but, like wearing a path in the woods, the process isn't quick or easy. Learners need to pay their "toll" by working, listening to feedback, and making corrections that will help them form the strongest connections possible. Sriram (2020) asserts the value of "desirable" or "productive" struggle—that is, some difficulty during the learning process can improve long-term retention of the material. To learn new vocabulary, students need to work at encoding, storing, and retrieving the information. Let's take a look at these three steps.

1. Encoding. The encoding stage involves the introduction of a new word, along with various pieces of information associated with it, such as its definition, pronunciation, and synonyms. The brain thinks in patterns, so the word and its information begin to form what is called a memory trace (Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014)—a weak connection in short-term memory. Think: Create the path that will become the superhighway!
2. Storage. The storage phase begins with taking the memory trace in short-term memory and consolidating it into a long-term memory. In their book Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, Brown and colleagues (2014) use the example of an essay: going from a rough draft to a publishable text takes time, with many revisions. The storage process is similar. During this step, it is also important to practice retrieval. Think: Practice makes permanent!
3. Retrieval. Retrieval is the grand finale of word study. To be able to retrieve a word, it is crucial to understand and use that word in new and unanticipated situations. Think: Memory Lane is a two-way street!

We can think of retrieval as the final "product" of learning, in that students who have learned something well should be able to retrieve it on demand. Yet this step can be a particular challenge. Often in my own career, I knew my students had stored the information, yet they had trouble retrieving it. Learning consists of creating and strengthening a network of neurons—or, returning to our metaphor, going from point A to point B more easily. But let's take a moment to think about the trip back, from point B to point A. This return, or retrieval stage, may cause the greatest struggle. It's also where the learning and connections really strengthen.

I often joke about my poor navigation skills and proclaim that I need to drop bread crumbs to find my way home, like Hansel and Gretel. Those bread crumbs are cues or triggers to help with finding the destination. So, too, it is for our students when they retrieve information. Certain triggers can make the difference between remembering and forgetting.

The Memory Systems

Let's look more closely at the memory systems that are involved with learning vocabulary: semantic memory, episodic memory, emotional memory, muscle memory (or motor procedural memory), and automatic memory (or nonmotor procedural memory). All these interrelated systems have important roles to play.

Semantic Memory

When information enters the brain, it first goes through the reticular activating system (RAS), which filters out about 99 percent of incoming information. From the RAS, the information moves to the second filter: the amygdala, the structure in charge of emotions. Then it passes through the hippocampus and on to the prefrontal cortex, where we find working memory—the temporary system that we use to reason, make decisions, and generally get things done.

Let's back up to the hippocampus. This seahorse-shaped structure in the limbic system plays a major role in storing semantic memory—the principal memory system involved when it comes to "book learning" (e.g., facts, concepts, meanings, and knowledge about our world). The hippocampus is where incoming information is connected to prior memories, or background knowledge (Willis & McTighe, 2019). When students access these memories, they look at them, consider them, and act on them using working memory. This process connects the new information to the stored prior knowledge, moving it out of working memory and into long-term memory and freeing up working memory to continue processing incoming information.

To illustrate, as you read, you use working memory: your brain takes the words from the page and connects them to any memories you have of them, which enables you to personalize the learning and comprehend what you are reading. Earlier I described learning as "creating and strengthening a network of neurons." The image of a network of neurons can help you visualize how new learning is literally connected to old. If the brain has a lot of prior knowledge of a given topic, it has a better chance of remembering new information connected to that topic. For this reason alone, we need to help students access prior knowledge before we introduce new content.

The journey of new information from immediate memory (which lasts only a few seconds) to short-term memory to working memory to long-term memory is the process by which semantic memories are stored. To learn information deeply and retain it, the brain needs to follow this process. But this is not the only entrance to new learning. Semantic memory is but one pathway that processes new learning, and, in fact, it can be the slowest.

Episodic Memory

Sharing space with semantic memory in the hippocampus, episodic memory consists of our life experiences—our "episodes." We often learn semantic information through our experiences; they can be the vehicle through which information enters the brain. This has powerful implications for learning and teaching. If your students sit at the same desks, in the same rows, looking at the same bulletin boards and posters, following the same agenda day in and day out during the entire school year, the information they learn may mix together in their brains, and not much will stand out in their memories. However, if you make things more interesting and less predictable by using novel approaches to learning, mixing up the seating, going on field trips, and decorating the room in a way to enhance the content being learned, memory can blossom. Each day becomes not just a class but an episode in students' lives. Even when episodes themselves are forgotten, the content itself often remains. When it comes to new vocabulary, episodic memory can facilitate faster learning, as it provides more avenues for retention.

Emotional Memory

The episodes that live powerfully in our memories often have an emotional component. The emotional memory system is the most powerful, to the point that it can bypass the others. Recall that the amygdala, the brain structure in charge of emotions, is the second filter for all incoming sensory information. Therefore, information that has an emotional component will immediately be stored when it comes to the amygdala. If those emotions are negative, the amygdala will trigger a stress response that can disrupt clear thinking and memory retrieval. Conversely, positive emotions can greatly enhance learning. As I noted in 101 Strategies to Make Academic Vocabulary Stick (Sprenger, 2017), "Because emotional memory takes precedence over the other long-term memory systems, teachers would be wise to connect learning to positive emotions, such as joy, pride, and humor" (p. 16). Giving vocabulary words and their meanings a positive emotional twist will support the encoding, storage, and retrieval processes.

Muscle Memory

Do you remember learning to ride a bike? Initially, you had to use higher-level thinking to figure out the kickstand, the brakes, and the rules of the road. You probably listened to someone telling you how to lean one way or another, and when to slow down using those brakes. Once you got your balance and started to ride, though, your body just took over.

Fast-forward to now: even if you haven't ridden one in years, you could still get on a bike and ride. Muscle memory, or motor procedural memory, would take over. Your muscles remember how to do it.

We can use muscle memory when teaching vocabulary, too. Students already use the muscles of the mouth and tongue as they learn to pronounce the words, and you can incorporate movements associated with the word's meaning as well. For instance, if students mime breaking their pencils in half while learning analyze, they will be more likely to remember that the word means "to break things down."

Automatic Memory

Automatic memory, or nonmotor procedural memory, is where any learning that has become automatic is stored. So many things we teach live here: think of the Pledge of Allegiance, multiplication tables, and the alphabet song. These are learned through rote memory—that is, by repetition to the point of automaticity. Although this is not a protocol for deep learning, it's essential in certain circumstances. When someone asks you which letter comes after O in the alphabet, it's nice not to need to sing the song to yourself to get the answer, as most small children do. If someone starts singing a popular song from years ago, isn't it satisfying to be able to join right in, even though you haven't thought about the song for a decade? More important, to perform well academically and succeed on standardized tests, students need a smoothly running automatic memory system to process and store the academic vocabulary of the standards.

What Happens When a Word Doesn't Stick?

The following scenario shows what can happen when an essential vocabulary word hasn't made it into a student's long-term automatic memory.

Michael sits quietly at his seat, staring at the paper before him. His pencil is clenched in his hand. His eyes dart across the words on the page. He doesn't understand what is expected of him. As a result, he is embarrassed and a little panicky. This is a state test, and Michael knows he is not allowed to speak to anyone. He is feeling anxious, and he continues to look down at his paper and then down at his lap. As the minutes tick by on the clock, he feels increasingly hopeless.

Mrs. Murphy observes the students as she sits at her desk. Occasionally, she cruises the room very quietly so as not to disturb the students who appear to be working diligently. She sees Michael put his No. 2 pencil down. This does not bode well for Michael's test score. When time is up, Mrs. Murphy asks all students to put their pencils down and collects the test booklets and answer sheets.

At this point, Mrs. Murphy approaches Michael.

"It looked like you were having some problems with the test, Michael. Did you have trouble reading the text selections?"

Still looking down, Michael replies, "No, Mrs. Murphy."

"Then why weren't you answering the questions?"

"I didn't know what they wanted me to say."

"So you understood the readings, but you didn't understand the questions?"

"Yeah, I just didn't know what that word meant—analyze."

"But Michael, we have gone over the definition of that word. You have done some activities in which you had to analyze how two articles addressed the same idea or theme. Do you remember that?"

"No." Michael continues to look down, now at the floor. Mrs. Murphy looks concerned but gets on with the class.

I want to make two observations about this scenario. First, according to Michael, he understood the texts he had to read to answer the questions. If that is true, his ability to tackle the complexity of the readings was probably a great accomplishment for him. It may very well be that he understood the readings but could not answer the questions because they contained vocabulary that he had not mastered. The way memory works in this situation is as follows:

1. Michael reads the selections. While reading, his working memory holds onto the new information while drawing on previously stored long-term memories to help him comprehend what he reads.
2. When Michael reads the questions about the passages he has just read, he must be able to understand the vocabulary of those questions so well that he doesn't use any of the working-memory space that is now designated as a holding port for the comprehension of the selections.
3. Michael should automatically comprehend what each question is asking without skipping a beat. If he does not understand a given question, there are a few different situations that can follow. First, he might ponder the wording of the question. In this scenario, the challenging word was analyze. He could sit there and say to himself, "Analyze. What is that? I know I've heard it before. But how do I analyze something?" Now, either he figures out what the word means and returns to the test, or he does not and leaves the answer blank. If he does suddenly recall how to analyze, he must now go back and figure out again what he has to analyze. You see, he pushed some of that information out of his working memory as he tried to figure out the definition of the word, and the stress he felt from not knowing the word also hampered his brain from working optimally. And time keeps on ticking. …

My second observation of the Michael scenario is that he is looking down. If you are familiar with eye-accessing cues as described by Ruby Payne (2009), you know that when we look down, we are accessing our feelings rather than our memories. As long as Michael is looking down, feeling bad that he doesn't understand what he's supposed to do and perhaps feeling "dumb," he cannot access the definition of the word analyze; he must look up to get the visualizations he may have stored from learning the word. Thus, the first thing to do in a similar situation in your classroom is to walk over to the student and ask a question that forces them to look up at you. That could trigger a memory.

If They Process It, It Will Be Stored

Memory is processed in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. How the Brain Learns Vocabulary
• Chapter 2. A Word About Words
• Chapter 3. Pre- and Post-Assessment of Vocabulary Knowledge
• Chapter 4. List 1: The Foundational 11
• Chapter 5. List 2: The Necessary 9
• Chapter 6. List 3: The Ultimate 5
• Chapter 7. Making Them Stick
• Appendix: Templates
• References
• About the Author
• Related ASCD Resources
• Study Guide
• Copyright