The Vocabulary of Elementary Core Reading Programs

• In Event: 29.077 - Words for Schools: A Research Project Designed to Identify the Vocabulary That Students Need to Know and Educators Need to Ensure They Learn

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to identify 1) which words and word families appear in core reading programs for 1st through 5th grade, 2) the rate at which words and word families are introduced from grade to grade, and 3) the amount of repetition of words and word families in each grade.

Perspective

The CCSS (2010) strongly emphasize the need for vocabulary learning, repeatedly stating that students need to "acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases." However, teachers have very little information about which words to teach (Graves, in press; E. H. Hiebert, personal communication, June, 2014). A recent survey (EMR, 2012) indicated that 84% of schools closely follow or selectively use core reading programs. Analyzing the vocabulary in these texts can provide educators with information that they need in making curricular and instructional decisions.

Data Sources

Based on the Education Market Research database (2012) and discussions with publishers about recent consolidations, four current, best-selling core reading programs were identified. The words tallied for the study included all words that appeared in the student editions of each of the programs and were intended for students to read independently.

Method

First, the texts were digitized and edited according to a standardized protocol. Next, through computer analysis, the number of tokens (running words) and types (unique words) were tabulated by program and grade. Then, words were grouped into families based on the linguistic analysis of Bauer and Nation (1993), and computer-based morphological analysis was accomplished using Morfessor 2.0 (Virpioja, Smit, Grönroos, & Kurimo, 2013). After this, the number of word families and the degree to which word families were repeated were determined. Finally, a wide variety of descriptive statistics was calculated by series and grade.

Results

• Together, the four programs contained a total of 2,175,000 tokens. Each of the programs includes a large number of word families. If a word family is defined as a root plus inflections, the number of word families in the four programs ranged from 13,403 to 15,575.
• Each program includes a large percentage of frequent words: Between 83% and 85% of the words used were among the 4,000 most frequent English words.
• Within each program, the number of types, tokens, and word families increases at each grade level.
• The largest increase in words and word families occurs between 1st grade and 2nd grade, with each program including more than double the number of types in 2nd grade.
• Most word families are not repeated frequently within a program in a grade. For example, only one 1st grade program had more than 10% of word families repeated at least 20 times.

Significance

Students who enter school with limited vocabularies will face increasing challenges as each year introduces more new word families. Knowledge of which word families students are most likely to encounter can inform curriculum and instructional decisions for teachers, schools and districts, and publishers, as well as useful provide data for researchers.

Authors

• Kimberly C. Bowen, MetaMetrics

• Heather Hughes Koons, MetaMetrics

• Eleanor E. Sanford-Moore, MetaMetrics