S8 E5: No perfect set of words: Building vocabulary, with Margaret McKeown

Science of Reading: The Podcast

This episode’s guest is Margaret McKeown, Ph.D., a retired professor from the University of Pittsburgh, decades-long researcher, and former elementary school teacher. In it, Margaret and Susan address why vocabulary is so important, particularly for knowledge building; talk about the various elements of effective vocabulary instruction; discuss the key role of informal instruction in vocabulary building; and share best practices for assessing vocabulary. Listeners will come away from this episode with a deeper understanding of the how and why of vocabulary instruction, as well as tips for bolstering vocabulary instruction in their own communities.
Show notes:

• Follow Margaret on X
• Listen: In Season 8 Episode 3, Gina Cervetti also spoke with Susan about vocabulary development
• Book: Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction by Isabel L. Beck, Margaret G. McKeown, Linda Kucan
• Book: Creating Robust Vocabulary by Isabel L. Beck, Margaret G. McKeown, Linda Kucan
• Book: Vocabulary Assessment to Support Instruction by Margaret G. McKeown, Paul D. Deane, Judith A. Scott, Robert Krovetz, and René R. Lawless
• Website: Etymonline.com, for learning about etymology

Quotes:

“Good instruction needs to be interactive. We're using words. Vocabulary pervades the day.” —Margaret McKeown

“Relax, because you're never going to be able to teach kids all the words that they really need to know, so just drop that.” —Margaret McKeown
“There is no perfect set of words, so don't worry about which words you're using, just sort of tune your mind to the kinds of words that turn up in texts a lot, ones that go across texts, not so much ones that are just, domain specific, but what words am I going to read in a novel, a social studies text, a newspaper article? Those are the kinds of words.” —Margaret McKeown
“If you do one thing, set up an attitude about words, this idea of reveling in words, and then just drop them in.” —Margaret McKeown