1. Vocabulary Strategies to
Improve SAT Scores
Leonardtown High School
Christine Chadwick, Stefanie
Glorioso, Daniel Morris, Marc Pirner

2. Justification
SIP: Improve SAT scores- “Offer the entire
school testing skills and vocabulary words”
35 Strategies for developing Content Area Vocabulary by
“Content area achievement depends closely on students’
mastery of specialized vocabulary”Our Strategy:
Semantic Mapping

3. Content Area Examples
• English- students write the way they talk (or
text), emphasis on vocabulary to help overall academic
English
• English- explicit academic vocabulary instruction is not
being observed in some classes
• Government- there are many words and concepts that
are specific to government that are fundamental to
learning / high performance in social studies
• Chemistry- there are many vocabulary words that are
highly specific to chemistry that are need to be
successful in the sciences

4. Problem and Population
• Students could improve their verbal SAT scores
and content area achievement with more explicit
vocabulary instruction.
• Population:
• Honors Chemistry
• English 11 and 12 Standard and CM
• Government 10 CM

5. Semantic Map
• Structured word map
• write the vocabulary word in the center
• connect words that are
synonyms, antonyms, definitions, examples, parts of
speech etc.
• Gives students
• context rather than dictionary definition
• usage rather than memorization
• more vocabulary
• Example of student work

6. Benefits of Strategy
• Allows for a visual/spatial representation of
vocabulary
• Students see the relationships between concepts and
vocabulary
• Requires higher order thinking skills
• Can help activate prior knowledge

7. Research questions
• Affective Question:
• Do the students feel comfortable using
content area vocabulary?
• General Questions:
• Are the students using the vocabulary?
• Are students’ vocabulary scores rising?

8. Data collection plan
Pre-post Tests Observation Student Work
Do students feel
comfortable using
X X X
content
vocabulary?
Are the students
using the X X X
vocabulary?
Are vocabulary
X X X
scores rising?

9. Pre-post Assessment I
• Half of the questions on the pre-post assessment will
look like the following question:
• (Vocabulary Word)
• A. I have never encounter this word before.
• B. I have seen this word before.
• C. I can define this word.
• D. I have used this word before
• Other half to check student understanding of each vocabulary
word.

10. Pre-post Assessment II
• 10 vocabulary words
• Words will be used in context
• Students will determine whether the word is
used correctly
• Selected response format
• Post assessment- vocabulary quiz

11. Observation guidelines
• Specific items to observe:
• If the students used vocabulary words
• When and how often students use vocabulary
words in speech and writing
• Tally of how many times students use
vocabulary words
• Questions to think about during observation:
• Do students hesitate when attempting to use
vocabulary words?

12. Timeline
• Each group member will complete every step on
the decided day in their respective classrooms.
• October 18: pre-test 1 will be given with the
vocabulary for the week.
• October 22: post-test 1 will be given for the same
vocabulary.
• October 25: pre-test 2 given with vocabulary for the
week.
• Week of October 26: strategy implemented
• October 29: post-test 2 will be given for the same
vocabulary
• November 8 and 9: analyze data

13. English 11 Results
Quantitative Data
• Vocabulary words • Student view on
used correctly vocabulary knowledge
• Pre-post 1: p=1.846E-12 • Pre-post 3: p=3.787E-23
Significant Significant
• Pre-post 2: p=0.308 • Pre-post 4: p=3.376E-16
Not Significant Significant
• Post-post 1: p=3.153E-11 • Post-Post 2: p=6.182E-5
Significant Significant
• The semantic maps • Semantic maps made a
made a significant significant difference in
difference in increasing increasing student self view
vocabulary scores. of vocabulary knowledge

14. English 12 Results
Quantitative Data
• Vocabulary words
used correctly • Student view of
vocabulary use
• Pre-post 1: p=0.102 • Pre-post 1: p= 3.16x10^-
Not Significant 5 Significant
• Pre-post 2: p=2.37x10^- • Pre-post 2: p=1.28x10^-
4 Significant 10 Significant
• Post-post 1: p=0.0516 • Post-post 1: p=8.51x10^-
Not Significant 3 Significant
• The semantic maps • The semantic maps
made a significant made a significant
difference in difference in
increasing increasing vocabulary
vocabulary scores. scores.

15. Chemistry Honors Results
• Vocabulary Words Correctly Used
• Pre test 1: Post test 1 Ttest p.= 2.03x10-6
• This shows that the students made significant improvements
on their knowledge of the vocabulary words from the pre test
to the post test.
• Pretest 2: Post test 2 Ttest p.= 8.95x10-13
• This shows that the students made significant improvements
on their knowledge of the vocabulary words from the pre test
to the post test.
• Post test 1: Post test 2 Ttest p.= 0.0769
• There is no statistical significant difference between the two
post tests, but is approaching significance..

16. Chemistry Honors Results
• Student View on Vocabulary Knowledge
• Pre-test 1: Post test 1 Ttest p.= 3.55x10-9
• This shows that the students made significant improvements
in their knowledge of the vocabulary words from the pre test
to the post test.
• Pre-test 2: Post-test 2 Ttest p.= 1.37x10-16
• This shows that the students made significant improvements
in their knowledge of the vocabulary words from the pre test
to the post test.
• Post test 1: Post test 2 Ttest p.= 0.0215
• This shows that the students felt they knew the words more
after they did the semantic maps than when they did not use
any type of formal strategy.

17. Experiment Variation
• With this variation of the experiment, the same test was
given 3 different times:
• Pre-test- first time they see the test
• Post-test – second time- still no intervention
• Final- third time after semantic mapping
• Data is compared between pre-post, pre-final, and post-
final to determine whether or not the intervention was
successful

18. Government Results
• Vocabulary words
used correctly
• Pre-post: p= 0.341761 • Students view on
Not significant vocabulary
knowledgePre-post: p=
• Pre-final: p= 0.000149 0.003989
SignificantPre-final: p=
Significant
1.34406E-12 Significant
Post-final: p= 2.80948E-07
• Post-final: p=4.75131E-05 SignificantThe semantic
Significant mapping technique made a
significant difference in
• The semantic mapping increasing student comfort with
technique made a vocabulary.
significant difference in
increasing vocabulary
scores.

19. Findings from observations
• Few observations were made:
• rarely using vocabulary words in English or
Government class
• used more in practice in Chemistry
• used when explicitly asked to
• Students recognized words when used by others

20. Overall Findings
• Vocabulary scores increased from Post 1 to Post 2
• Student view of vocabulary use increased
• Rare student use of vocabulary words in the classroom
setting, more confidence and use in Chemistry
• Recognition of vocabulary words when used

21. Answers to research
questions
• Are the students using the
vocabulary?
• Students use vocabulary rarely
• Students reported using vocabulary words more
often after the implementation of semantic
mapping
• Therefore- semantic mapping increases student
use of vocabulary words

22. Answers to research
questions
• Are students’ vocabulary scores
rising?
• Yes, scores are rising in English and Government, but
not in Chemistry
• could be due to a lack of vocabulary routine in
Chemistry.

23. Discussion
• This strategy yielded overall positive results
although reimplementation would help to provide
more reliable results
• Reasons data could be flawed:
• Faulty selected response questions
• Strategies were not implemented identically in all
classrooms, nor did they follow a specific procedure
• difficulty of vocabulary words varied across data sets
• Timing of the tests
• Deviation from observation guidelines
• Too many words in a short amount of time for Chemistry

24. Next steps?
• Implications for Future Research:
– strategy should be implemented identically across all
content areas
– use fewer vocabulary words of relatively equal difficulty
– could be broken into two separate studies
–One study on vocabulary scores
–specify use as a study tool
–One study on student view on vocabulary use

25. Back to the big picture
• Semantic mapping is one of many study tools
• Students need to learn about different study
tools
• encouraged to use other visuals as study
tools to study for the SAT.