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A review of the Book //Inside Words// by Janet Allen and how it connects to vocabulary research.

As we know, teachers have tool boxes filled with tried and true ideas, strategies and activities that work well with students – tools of the trade. Effective teachers constantly update and upgrade their toolboxes, by turns rejecting, replacing and reworking their tools to best serve their students. Author Janet Allen, a former practitioner, has combined what she knows about teacher tool boxes with what she has learned as a researcher-writer-consultant to create a book designed to help teachers add specialized tools for teaching academic vocabulary. This month, our featured practitioner book is //Inside Words: Tools for Teaching Academic Vocabulary Grades 4-12// by Janet Allen (2007). Recognizing the importance of effective reading and writing in the content areas in today’s ever-evolving global world, the book addresses the demands content area teachers face as they expose students to and attempt to engage students with specialized disciplinary texts. //Inside Words// is the third installment in vocabulary guru Allen’s trilogy of books (along with //Words, Words, Words// and //Tools for Teaching Content Literacy// ) that provides rich resources for teaching vocabulary in ELA and across the curriculum.

We know about the importance of vocabulary instruction for reading comprehension from the work of researchers and experts in literacy education (e.g., Baumann, 2009; Davis, 1944; Duke, Pearson, Strachan, & Billman, 2011). Vocabulary in general is the basis student draw on to build the text-base of what they are reading (Hampton & Resnick, 2008; Kintsch, 2004), but academic vocabulary is of critical value for successful student comprehension of content area texts. This is especially true for middle school and high school students as they encounter increasingly difficult texts in their learning. A variety of factors contributes to students’ difficulties in comprehending disciplinary texts, but lack of academic vocabulary is a major one (Buly & Valencia, 2002; Snow, Porche, Tabors, & Harris, 2007).

As you read our reviews on the tools in Janet Allen’s //Inside Words//, please keep in mind that these vocabulary instructional tools are only one aspect of academic vocabulary instruction. Effective vocabulary instruction needs to be systematic and multi-faceted. Both direct vocabulary instruction and incidental learning of vocabulary should be valued. Vocabulary instruction should “embed in rich relevant contexts, and include experiences surrounded with meaningful talk” (Duke et al., 2011, p. 74).

As with all of the selections presented by the Literacy RPC, we advise practitioner book clubs using //Inside Words// to read critically and proceed with caution! At first glance, //Inside Words// appears to be a rich repository of vocabulary tools, but our team of experts, vigilant in their pursuit of the research-practice connection, has put the book and its ideas under the research microscope. We have taken the time to parse out its strengths and weaknesses, and we present the resultshere on our wiki site. Teachers can take a look at our expert critiques and then use the information to examine the entire book in order to make educated decisions about what tools to add to their burgeoning toolboxes and why. It is our hope that practitioners who use our site will then pay the information forward to perpetuate the research-practice connection. Happy reading! This wikispace has three sections: our reviews on the tools in Inside Words, information about Janet Allen and Inside Words, and additional resources. Each section has several topics under them. Click on the embedded links to be directed to these pages!



What is “**academic**” vocabulary? What does academic vocabulary look like in the content areas? Is it the bold-faced words at the bottom of the page, or are vocabulary words found scattered throughout the text? One of the major shortcomings of Janet Allen’s book, //Inside Words//, is that it never defines the term “academic vocabulary.” Although there does not seem to be one authoritative source on the matter, many have attempted to articulate what such words are. Below you will find some of the sources and ideas that I have found to be most useful in understanding how to best select and teach words that are most essential in understanding text. [**//Caveat//**: this is a subjective process that will of necessity be refined over time spent teaching students, as most teachers who have succeeded with vocabulary instruction can probably attest to.]
 * ====**Coxhead’s Academic Wordlist** (2000) is a list created to capture the most important and frequent words used in the English language in //more academic ways//. Some examples of these words are: //benefit//, //vary//, //factor//, //adjacent//, //forthcoming//, and//persistent//. There are helpful websites cited in Stahl and Nagy (2006) that break down the list efficiently, such as **[].** ====


 * ====**Tier I, II and II Words:** A compliment, or alternative, is using Beck, McKeown and Kucan’s (2002) tier II and III word categories to select words. Tier II words are not unlike many found on Coxhead’s list, yet they also include words that have the potential to greatly increase a person’s descriptive and expressive vocabulary. Examples of such words are: melancholy, serendipity, luminous and pugnacious. These words are also likely to occur across a variety of contexts, such as a newspaper story, a literary work, or a description of a historical event in a Social Studies textbook. Tier III words tend to be more domain-specific, such as mitochondria, caesura, or quadratic equations. These words are key to understanding important concepts and entire units in their subject domain, yet they are not words that have cross-over currency in the daily discourse patterns of ordinary people engaging in practices of school, work, and popular culture. ====


 * ====**Academic Language** as defined by **Catherine Snow**: Professor Catherine Snow is a researcher at Harvard University who has written and researched extensively on issues of vocabulary and comprehension. In a recent article, she defines academic language in science as that “used to refer to the form of language expected in contexts such as the exposition of topics in the school curriculum, making arguments, defending propositions, and synthesizing information” ( Snow, 2010 ). She notes that although academic language is difficult to box in definitively, due to the great variety and diversity in the function of those words, it is possible to characterize what academic language does often contain: formal, sophisticated, concise words. A link to this article can be found on our "Additional Resources" page.====


 * ====**Word Generation:** A school-wide academic word intervention program developed by Catherine Snow and Claire White for middle school literacy development in Boston public schools. The web-site includes short, informative videos that feature prominent scholars as they explain many factors associated with the selection and teaching of, as well as the theory behind academic vocabulary instruction. The website is a great resource if your are trying to understand and teach academic vocabulary to your students. You can access the website at: http://www.wordgeneration.org/academicvocab.html.====


 * ====**Stahl and Nagy (2006)** recommend the teaching of high frequency words. Check out **[|www.wordcount.org/main.php]** for an online resource ranking the 86,800 most frequently used English words in order of frequency. ====

__ **References: ** __

Allen, J. (2007). //Inside words: Tools for teaching academic vocabulary grades 4-12//. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.

Baumann, J. F. (2009). Vocabulary and reading comprehension: The nexus of meaning. In S. E. Israel & G. G. Duffy (Eds.), //Handbook of research on reading comprehension// (pp. 323-346). New York: Routledge.

Beck, I., McKeown, M., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing //words// to //life: Robust vocabulary// instruction, New York: Guilford.

Buly, M., & Valencia, S. W. (2002). Below the bar: Profiles of students who fail statereading assessments. //Educational Evaluation////and Policy// Analysis, //24//(3), 219-239.

Coxhead, A. (2000) A new academic word list. //TESOL Quarterly// //34//, 2, 213-238.

Davis, F. B. (1994). Fundamental factors in readin comprehension. //Psychometrika//, //9//, 185-197.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">Duke, N., Pearson, P. D., Strachan, S. L., & Billman, A. K. (2011). Essential elements of fostering and teaching reading comprehension. In S. J. Samuels & A. E. Farstrup (Eds.), //What research has to say about reading instruction// (4th ed., pp. 51-93). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">Hampton, S., & Resnick, L. B. (2008). Chapter two: Reading comprehension. //Reading and Writing with understanding: Comprehension in fourth and fifth grades// (pp. 21-32). International Reading Association.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">Kintsch, W. (2004). The construction-integration model of text comprehension and its implications for instruction. In N. J. Unrau & R. B. Ruddell (Eds.), //Theoretical models and processes of reading// (5th ed., pp. 1270-1328). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Snow, C. E. (2010). Academic Language and the Challenge of Reading for Learning About Science. []//, 328//(April), 450-452.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">Snow, C., Porche, M. V., Tabors, P., & Harris, S. (2007). //Is literacy enough? Pathways to academic success for adolescents//. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.

Stahl, S. A., Nagy, W. E. (2006). Teaching word meanings. Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates.

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