One Teacher's Brilliant Summer Reading Hack

When middle school literature teacher Kathy Zimbaldi first pitched Vocabulary.com to her principal at the St. Vincent de Paul School in Houston, TX, she was pretty sure the tool would bring meaningful word learning to the literature curriculum. What she didn't realize? That it would also help her hack Summer Reading...and land her students a David-beats-Goliath monthly leaderboard win. 

(Teachers: Read Zimbaldi's story below for inspiration. Then check out "Five Back-to-School Ideas to Improve Literacy Immediately" to learn how to get started with Vocabulary.com in your own classroom.)

Meaningful Vocabulary Instruction

Before Vocabulary.com, Zimbaldi was teaching vocabulary via a vocabulary workbook, a method she had never found to be particularly effective but stuck with due to the lack of a better alternative. "As a literature teacher, there's so much that has to be accomplished in a given day — and there's so much that gets left out," Zimbaldi explained. "But using a vocabulary workbook, you assign the weekly list and you do the pages in the book and you correct the pages and you do the test and then they promptly forget the word."

Having seen Vocabulary.com in action briefly in another job where the students "went crazy" for it, Zimbaldi took another look at the program at St. Vincent's. "We were looking for something like Khan Academy but for language arts," she said, "something that allowed them to truly master the words beyond the week that they're due. The thing I love about Vocabulary.com is that It puts some work back on the students, and you can see that they are actually mastering the words."

The game was a hit. Playing it at home and in class, her 156 sixth, seventh, and eighth graders were highly engaged, calling out when they achieved mastery of a word, and discussing words' meanings as they consulted with one another on questions.

Competition fueled the fire. Recognizing fellow Houston-area Chavez and Bellaire high schools on the leaderboard for the Vocabulary Bowl, a year-long, North American-wide contest, St. Vincent's students were inspired, even if the much larger schools' leads seemed hopelessly out of reach. (The 2015-2016 Vocabulary Bowl, starting in October, will include separate middle school and high school divisions, with a monthly banner winner and an overall champion named in each.)

"My sixth graders would look at the leaderboard and say, 'How are we going to catch up?'" Zimbaldi recalled, "and I said, 'Let's beat them on the dailies.' I would give them a whole class period and we'd take screenshots and send them to the principals of Chavez and Bellaire and say, 'Watch out for St. Vincent's!' That was a goal you could set for the day and actually achieve, and it was really fun and really exciting for my students to see that leaderboard projected on the SmartBoard and to see themselves on it."  

Most importantly, however, Zimbaldi has been keeping an eye on her number one vocabulary-learning concern: retention. "The way I tell is in their writing. When I see it in their writing I know. I'm also looking for student feedback in other ways."

A Summer Reading Hack

Fast forward to Summer Reading planning meetings — St. Vincent's was looking to update their annual assignment. The book reports students turned in at the beginning of every school year were uninspired, unrelated to the curriculum, and with 300 showing up on her desk on the first day of school, placing too heavy of a burden on Zimbaldi's grading time. After attending an NCEA workshop "What do you do about summer reading?" she knew there had to be a better way. 

"This is really a national issue," Zimbaldi explained. At the very mention of summer reading, "everyone groans, kids and teachers alike. We all know the book reports don't work, and yet there has to be some kind of accountability. Do you give a quiz on the first day?" That only seemed worse. 

Thinking about the success students were experiencing with Vocabulary.com, Zimbaldi decided that she would use word-learning to ensure accountability. She would also assign texts that students would be useful to them once school was back in session. (Zimbaldi incorporated all three texts into her class, making one the focus of the literature curriculum for the first month of school; another the subject of an in-class discussion; and a third the base text for reading and writing workshop assignments, with students producing four discrete essays on topics such as "Describe a character that has an internal/external conflict.")

Although some students found the amount of vocabulary learning they were doing over the summer to be an adjustment, the vocabulary component helped with reading comprehension, as well as ensuring students achieved mastery of words. "I worked on the vocabulary lists before I read," reported rising seventh grader Jillian Hermoso. "It made me familiar with the hard words so I could read uninterrupted, allowing me to enjoy and understand the books better."

The work her students put in over the summer will impact their learning, and their grades. "These kids are going to do great when they get back," Zimbaldi explained. "For each of these books they'll get three 100s front-loaded into the marking period."

Added Bonus: A Monthly Leaderboard Win

"The first time I saw that banner I said to my students, 'I want that,'" Zimbaldi recalled. But it wasn't likely a school the size of St. Vincent de Paul would marshall the playing time to take one home. But, given the relatively quiet nature of the competition during the months when most schools are on break, St. Vincent's de Paul's small group of 156 middle schoolers suddenly saw their school climbing to the top. 

The David and Goliath nature of the victory made it that much more sweet. "We're making a huge deal about this here," Zimbaldi said with pride. Following a banner ceremony that took place in July, plans are in the works for a St. Vincent de Paul Welcome Back Vocabulary Party with donuts and homework passes for all students who achieved list mastery. The students will then be congratulated again at the first school-wide mass, and receive certificates testifying to their remarkable achievement. 

"It takes a lot of determination and perseverance from the students to get this far," wrote seventh grader Blair Bath in an essay that opened with, "Hooray! St. Vincent de Paul has ranked number one in North America for vocabulary.com’s July vocabulary bowl."

Hooray, indeed!

P.S. Teachers: Want to boost vocabulary learning in your classroom? Check out the Vocabulary.com Educator Edition, which allows you to easily create and assign assignments, track student progress, and align vocabulary lessons to texts you already teach.