Make academic vocabulary, verbal reasoning, and advanced mathematics part of the school curriculum in the upper primary grades¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 5 claims (4 for, 1 mixed) · 1 study (1 associational), q3 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 5 claims rest on one study

Description¶

Based on the finding that advanced linguistic skills are directly related to advanced mathematics, the authors recommend focusing on academic vocabulary, verbal reasoning, and advanced mathematics in schools by making them part of the school curriculum. They suggest a promising way to stimulate academic vocabulary is to approach domain-specific words as the means for communicating and thinking about disciplinary content, and that training of cognitive skills along with open-ended questions that prompt metacognition may stimulate deductive reasoning skills.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Children should be provided with opportunities to use academic vocabulary words in the context of the content that is being learned at that time

Constraints¶

• The supporting evidence is correlational; the recommended practices were not manipulated or tested in this study

Target Learners¶

• Fifth-grade students in upper primary education

Target Learning Goals¶

• Academic vocabulary
• Verbal/deductive reasoning
• Geometry and fractions

Claims¶

• Academic vocabulary is directly related to fifth-grade geometric skills over and above arithmetic skills [+W]
• Verbal reasoning is directly related to fifth-grade fraction skills over and above arithmetic skills [+W]
• Basic linguistic skills and working memory are indirectly related to fifth-grade fraction skills via arithmetic skills [+W]
• Basic linguistic skills and working memory are indirectly related to fifth-grade geometric skills via arithmetic skills [+W]
• Phonological skills were not significantly correlated with fraction skills, and verbal reasoning was not significantly correlated with arithmetic skills [~W]

Related Strategies¶

• Make development of formal, academic English a key instructional goal beginning in the primary grades, with dedicated curricula, daily integrated instruction, and teacher professional development

Examples¶

-

Key Sources¶

• Kleemans, T., Segers, E., & Verhoeven, L. (2018). Role of linguistic skills in fifth-grade mathematics. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 167, 404-413. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.11.012