Margaret McKeown Discusses Research on Vocabulary Assessment

Margaret McKeown
University of Pittsburgh

Key Video Quotes:
"We really wanted to know could they use the words? What did they know about the words? That forced us to develop a lot of our own assessments."

"When we work with teachers, a big question I get asked is, 'How do we assess vocabulary?' 'How do we know if our kids are getting anything from it?"

"Vocabulary is an incredibly important area, especially in the era of Common Core standards. We need to address students vocabulary needs... We need better assessments in classrooms and at the broader level."

"Our aim is to expand and re-imagine the nature of vocabulary assessment. Our overall goal is to develop a set of recommendations for teachers and for researchers about productive ways to measure vocabulary knowledge and growth."

"In order to be meaningful, vocabulary assessments need to capture what learners can do with the words that they know."

"When we're reading a text, we don't have to recall the meaning of every single word. We have to access some associations and how they relate to other words in the context and integrate words in order to come up with the meaning of a text."

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