Lillian Marshall

TE 842
A46383705

All about words: a Book Review

Section A: Book Review

Citation and introduction

While reading the syllabus for TE 842 I was very excited to see that All about words was
one of the options for a book club choice. I have heard that this book is very informative and
helpful for teachers, and I am pleased to express that it lived up to its reputation.

Neuman, S. B. & Wright, T. S. (2013). All about words: Increasing vocabulary in the Common
Core classroom, PreK-2. New York: Teachers College Press.

Rationale
As an undergraduate student at Michigan State, I had the benefit of going through both
the Education and Child Development programs. A huge part of the Child Development program
is learning how to speak to children to extend their speech. In fact, the first lab class is so
focused on language and speaking effectively to children that if you do not follow the language
sequence that is taught, you will lose a letter grade. Therefore, I thought this text would be
exceptionally helpful to me as both a refresher on the importance of language in the classroom,
as well as providing me with the opportunity to learn how to embed vocabulary more effectively
into everyday speech and text throughout my classroom.
Through my first year of teaching, it was reaffirmed for me time and time again that
students need support through language to navigate the classroom and to navigate being in what
is potentially the largest group of peers for some of them. Knowing that, once procedures are set
in place and academic learning can truly begin, the task is to make language and vocabulary
accessible to all in the room. One way immediately springs to mind of how to bring text into the
classroom is through environmental print, or the use of labeling objects seen on a daily basis in
order to help connect the object to meaningful text in an emergent reader’s setting. However, I
wanted to know more of what I could do from unit to unit, and since the first year goes so fast, I
did not feel that I had met that goal, so I chose to read All about words: Increasing vocabulary in
the Common Core classroom, PreK-2 because the majority of my students are in the very early
stages of reading and writing and I wanted to be a more effective educator in helping them on
their way.

Summary
All about words is a teacher guide written to help teachers teach vocabulary within the
parameters of the Common Core State Standards. It is designed to not only help with the delivery
of instruction, but to help meet student needs and close the achievement gap by building
strategies for classroom discussion and exploration. It includes strategies for planning, such as
how to design your classroom to teach vocabulary, helping the teacher to pull out essential
vocabulary words for different units, a teaching sequence for the gradual release of responsibility
onto students, and providing valuable information on assessment and how to reinforce student
learning.

Book group findings and reflection

When working as a group, we really focused on this reading from the standpoint of how
we would work to close the gap for students of low income families, as that was very strongly
emphasized in the text. This meant that vocabulary is used consistently in settings, regardless of
size, words are used appropriately and correctly, and activities encourage student use of the
vocabulary to extend learning and relate to previously taught units as well as building a wealth of
knowledge for students to use in future learning.
A lot of this text was centered around scaffolding children’s learning so that they can
then continue to grow on their own, such as the use of text sets and group reading; use text sets
that apply to the standards and have rich content. This will allow for in-depth learning through
tasks for student learning. Then, when assessing, take the time to gauge what students have
learned, what their misconceptions are, and then take the time to reteach what needs correction.
We loved how All about words related to the “ten evidenced-based best practices for
comprehensive literacy instruction” from Morrow and Gambrell. Though there were many
correlations, one that particularly stood out to me was Best Practice #7 of balancing student- and
teacher-led discussions by using the teacher time to teach vocabulary and surrounding concepts
and the student time to make connections, discuss/question, explore, and apply the new concepts.

Application
My developmental kindergarten classroom runs largely on play- and centers-based
learning because it allows me to meet children at their level and simplify or extend learning
based around the needs of the children who walk through my door, a lot of whom are from low
income families. I feel that this texts has given me some really solid strategies to incorporate
vocabulary more effectively into small-group tasks, especially having been provided with the
teaching sequence in chapter 3.
I think that this text also lends itself well to project-based learning or “themed units”,
which is what I’ve really been interested in doing more of within my classroom. I feel that I have
had some additional, common core state standards instruction on how to do accomplish this goal,
whereas in my undergraduate preschool internship the interns decided the themes, but I don’t
have the flexibility to do that currently.

Final thoughts
I really enjoyed this text. It was straightforward, very reader-friendly, and included a lot
of examples that can easily be translated to my classroom, as discussed in the “application”
section above. The pacing of the text was really informative because Neuman and Wright really
focused on teacher instruction first, then focused on the implementation based off of that
instruction.

Recommendation
I would certainly recommend this text to a teacher who wants to ignite the fire of learning
within their students; this texts provides a lot of examples on ways to incorporate vocabulary into
centers, group tasks, and individual tasks. I feel that this text is particularly relevant to the early
grades, but is helpful to all based on contextual learning. The emphasis on thoughtful, structured
planning is so prominent in the words of the authors that it left me feeling energized and excited
to try these strategies and activities in my own classroom.