Title: Generating Knowledge of Academic Language Among Urban Middle School Students
Abstract: Abstract A quasi-experimental study of a novel, cross-content area vocabulary intervention program called Word Generation showed significantly greater growth among 6th- to 8th-grade students in schools implementing the program than in comparison schools, on a curriculum-specific test. Furthermore, the language-minority students in the treatment, but not the comparison, schools showed greater growth than the English-only students. Improvement on the curriculum-specific test predicted performance on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) English language arts assessment, again only for students in the treatment schools. Recognizing the need to implement a more rigorous experimental study of this program, nonetheless we conclude that participation in the intervention, with its focus on deep reading, comprehension of current-events topics, productive classroom discussion, developing arguments, and producing persuasive essays, was a plausible contributor to student performance on the MCAS. Keywords: Vocabularyacademic languagediscussionreading comprehensionlanguage minority studentsView correction statement:Corrigendum ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The SERP–BPS field site and thus the original planning for Word Generation were supported by grants to the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP) from the Spencer Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; further development and evaluation of Word Generation were supported by a Senior Urban Education Fellowship awarded to Catherine Snow by the Council of Great City Schools. Joshua Lawrence was supported by funds awarded to Catherine Snow by the Spencer Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. We also acknowledge the funding to SERP from the Lowenstein Foundation, to develop professional development opportunities through www.wordgeneration.org. This research was supported in part by Grant Number R305A050056, National Research and Development Center for English Language Learners, from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), US Department of Education (USED). The contents do not necessarily represent the positions or policies of IES or USED and readers should not assume endorsement by the federal government for any of the positions or statements expressed herein. Notes a n = 134. b n = 265.