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=Building a Living Vocabulary=

Welcome! This wikispace will capture research, resources, and strategies developed by teachers as they begin to uncover effective methods for helping students shape a living vocabulary and background knowledge that will support them as learners.

What is a **//living vocabulary//**? It's a term that I coined in August of 2008 on the heels of a summer spent steeped in inquiry around powerful vocabulary instruction and assessment practices. I began my work by defining some essential questions, and I was most interested in discovering practices that would support students as sophisticated users of high frequency words. What sorts of instruction best enable students to use words with flexible accuracy? How do we assess vocabulary in ways that measure beyond rote meaning? I'm beginning to understand, through my own practice and reflection, how important it is for students to truly **//live//** the words that we want them to understand. Experiencing meaning firsthand provides a powerful schema that allows for the construction of deeper meaning. Sharing our unique experiences with words allows for divergent perspectives. As with all learning, a lot can be accomplished within the four walls of our classrooms, but in the end, we want students to take what they have learned with them and use it to make their lives and their communities better places. How we approach instruction and assessment influences how ready, willing and able students will be to access what they've learned on their own time in their lives outside of school. Bringing the outside in engages students, allows them to connect classroom learning to their other experiences, and provides us an opportunity to rethink what learning really is, how it works, and how to teach in increasingly effective ways.

Please visit the following spaces to learn more about these research-based methods for supporting the construction of a living vocabulary. **The resources, ideas, and strategies embedded on these pages aren't merely my own. They are the shared work of the educators I've worked with in various settings, beginning in July of 2008 and others gathered from online contributers**. Please consider joining this wiki and adding your voice to this space!

Angela Stockman, Director [|WNY Education Associates]