Abstract
Abstract The purpose of this study was to compare 2 methods for directly teaching word meanings to kindergarten students within storybook read‐alouds that varied in instructional time and depth of instruction along with a control condition that provided students with incidental exposure to target words. Embedded instruction introduces target word meanings during storybook readings in a time‐efficient manner. Extended instruction is more time intensive but provides multiple opportunities to interact with target words outside the context of the story. Participants included 42 kindergarten students who were taught 9 target words, 3 with each method. Target words were counterbalanced in a within‐subjects design. Findings indicated that extended instruction resulted in more full and refined word knowledge, while embedded instruction resulted in partial knowledge of target vocabulary. Implications are discussed in relation to the strengths and limitations of different approaches to direct vocabulary instruction...
Highlights
Researchers and practitioners interested in accelerating academic achievement face a difficult challenge concerning how best to leverage scarce instructional time
The purpose of this study was to compare 2 methods for directly teaching word meanings to kindergarten students within storybook readalouds that varied in instructional time and depth of instruction along with a control condition that provided students with incidental exposure to target words
Our results indicated that there were statistically significant differences at posttest favoring words taught with extended and embedded instruction over words receiving only incidental exposure during story reading on all measures
Summary
Researchers and practitioners interested in accelerating academic achievement face a difficult challenge concerning how best to leverage scarce instructional time. Instructional approaches that allow the introduction of many word meanings most often provide students with brief definitions of target words within the context of oral language experiences such as story readalouds (e.g., Elley, 1989; Penno, Wilkinson, & Moore, 2002). This approach characterizes the research of Biemiller and his colleagues. Providing brief definitions of target words within the context of a story read-aloud takes very little time, perhaps 1 minute per word (Coyne, McCoach, & Kapp, 2007). Limited time restricts the number of exposures students have to target words in embedded vocab-
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