Program Implementation

WordGen Weekly is designed as a whole-school program. School leadership must be sure to communicate with the entire school community clearly in advance of implementation.

Listen to Boston principal Andrew Bott's comments about how to effectively launch the program:

Stage 1:
ASSESS the school's readiness for the program.
Consider the school's entire literacy program. Devote time to necessary professional development. Discuss data and program implementation during faculty meetings. Mark optimal launch dates on the school calendar.
Stage 2:
FRAME the discussion as "how" to improve vocabulary instruction instead of "whether" to do so.
Discuss the principal's role in the Word Generation program. Determine whether Word Generation as an intervention matches a school's needs. Refocus the debate among faculty—think together about how to address vocabulary rather than whether. Develop systems of planning, debriefing on, and revising program implementation.
Stage 3:
ENSURE that the principal has support from another instructional leader on site.
Emphasize the necessity of a Word Generation point person on site. Consider a literacy coach (or other credible team member) the ideal candidate. Bear in mind that the principal should not work alone.
Stage 4: 
PREPARE for skeptical responses.
Anticipate a possible lack of "buy-in" among teachers. Retain the flexibility needed to listen to skeptics but still persevere. Use data to determine the program's effectiveness. Take the important step to reach out to content teachers in areas other than English.
Stage 5: 
INTEGRATE Word Generation into other school accountability systems.
Track evidence of teacher enthusiasm. Consider Word Generation an effective and meaningful alternative to test-preparation activities. Provide feedback on essays to add to students' sense of accountability.
SUMMARY OF MR. BOTT'S ADVICE:
  • Be sure that teachers in content-areas other than ELA understand that they also have a crucial role in developing academic language when working with students.
  • Remind teachers that this program calls on them to invest only fifteen minutes once a week for most teachers and twice a week for ELA teachers.
  • Word Generation is a flexible program. It need not follow the sequence as printed in the student and teacher materials.
  • Develop a plan and a schedule school-wide so that students and teachers are prepared to continue the Word Generation unit throughout the week without interruption.
  • Student materials can be bound into a book that students carry or distributed as weekly unit packets (or many other ways). Schools should decide as a faculty what the approach will be for materials.
  • Teachers should preview the materials and be aware that some communities may find some of the topics highly controversial.
  • What about short weeks? Some schools compress the units and others skip Word Generation during short weeks.

Development of Word Generation was led by Catherine Snow (Harvard University) and Suzanne Donovan (SERP). Major SERP contributors to program development include: Claire White, Alyse Krantz, Halley Wheeless, Matt Ellinger, David Dudley, and Patrick Hurley. Boston Public Schools and other districts in Massachusetts and Maryland collaborated with SERP to develop Word Generation.


Support for Word Generation was provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Noyce Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Leon Lowenstein Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education through grant numbers R305A090555 and R305F100026. The information provided does not represent views of the funders.

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