Vocab Gapping

I was born into words, and I’m way into them back. I like they way they sound alone and the way they work together, forming rich thoughts from pretty little things. Bring on roots and Latin, diphthongs, adverbs and cognates. I like learning new words and using them—being pretentious in good company—letting them slide from my tonsils to my tongue, flipping into the air. A well-developed male vocabulary gets me going while caveman semantics stop me short. There is a direct correlation between vocabulary and sex appeal; apparently, there’s also a direct correlation between vocabulary and success in school, college and beyond. As summer fades and year two of teaching looms, it’s probably time to think about the latter more than the former.

If you’re at all plugged in, you’ve heard of the achievement gap: white kids are more successful than black kids, rich than poor, zip codes are numeric determinants of success, etc. The achievement gap is a lot more nuanced, though, than mainstream media gives it credit. My school got its state test scores back this week, and we’re feeling pretty damn good. 100% of our seventh and eight graders scored proficient or advanced on the math exam, outperforming Brooklyn students by a scary margin and keeping pace with white students across the state. Take that, achievement gap: You can close yourself right up.

Except not quite.

The data isn’t nearly so tidy where English/Language Arts is concerned. Though twice as many of my seventh graders scored proficient than did Brooklyn seventh graders at large, the scores are a far cry from 100%. Breakdown: math gives us bragging/drinking rights, but there’s still a gaping gap in more literary pursuits. 

Why is it that inner city kids can lap white kids in fractions and division but still trail far behind in reading and writing? There are lots of theories, but I find one particularly compelling: the vocabulary gap. Studies show that by the time a disadvantaged, inner city kid enters elementary school, she knows something like 10,000 fewer words than her wealthy white counterpart. If nothing is done to counteract these numbers, the cavern widens until we’re talking Grand Canyon. This is absolutely staggering. 

I spent all day at a conference in Tarrytown learning sexy new strategies for teaching reading. If you've seen it, picture a nerdier version of the movie "Cedar Rapids." Part of the day was devoted to vocabulary instruction. According to some mathematical process (no one’s strength in the room), close to 20% of our instructional time as reading teachers should be devoted to word study. We started the session by reading a chapter from Animal Farm and identifying the words with which our students would struggle. Overall comprehension of the text relies on these words, and the list was close to 30. Do you teach these words before the reading or during? Do you skip over some and focus on others? In the vocabulary hierarchy, which words are tops? If you pause to explicitly teach every difficult word, you’re losing out on Socialist allegories and narrative tone, but without the words, are those things even possible? For a teacher, the task at hand is daunting; for a student who’s been vocabulary gapped, the task is near-impossible. But if we give up, it gets worse.

So every day I teach words: skeptical, cynical, eloquence, benevolence. We study roots and parts of speech, we practice in pairs and on our own; there are review sessions and vocabulary quizzes. But we’re talking thousands and thousands, and as my students spit new vocab, so too do the white kids who've already gapped them. Losing battle? Maybe.

We can never make up thousands, but we can teach kids that knowing words is worth the trouble. That they can use context to find meaning and dictionaries when that falls short. We can teach kids that words are meant to be known and savored. Word up.