In an effort to encourage school wide vocabulary skills, HHS has implemented a new system of learning called the Schoolwide Academic Vocabulary Initiative (SAVI). Each week since Feb. 24, a word has been introduced, used frequently by teachers and defined for the students. The purpose of SAVI is to help students understand academic words that are often used on tests, and to help them succeed.

“It emphasizes that much of the vocabulary that students need to be successful is not the kind that you find in the glossary of a textbook and it distinguishes between what we call brick words, which are textbook words and are the foundation for content and knowledge, and mortar words which glue all of that content together,” English teacher Catherine Soenksen said.

Teachers handed out pre-assessments, before implementing the system to see what students knew about the words beforehand.

“It’s very interesting to see that students were often getting the basic word to definition correlation correct and yet were not able to use those words correctly in a sentence of their own,” Soenksen said.

The Strong Instructional Leadership team, which is made up of teachers from every department and meet on early release days, came up with the idea to install the program at HHS.

“Our team came up with three goals for the year and one of those goals was to begin a school wide vocabulary initiative,” Soenksen said.

The idea had some inspiration from several sources.

“The middle schools did something similar last year and saw some success. Other schools around the country have incorporated what we call ‘Academic Vocabulary Instruction’ and have seen success, in fact some of our new teachers who have come from out-of-state have seen such a plan in place and have seen gains in schools where they were previously,” Soenksen said.

“Mortar” words, or academic vocabulary words, are the type of words that the Strong Instructional Leadership team is targeting.

“Students don’t clearly understand mortar words and all of that content knowledge doesn’t stick in your brain like it should or it gets misunderstood. We’re not just looking to improve SOL scores, the standardized test questions often have academic vocabulary words that can be misleading and don’t allow students to share what they really know because they don’t understand the question,” Soenksen said.

The list of words that was assembled by the Strong Instructional Leadership team were words that most teachers felt were showing up on tests often.

“Our representatives went back to their departments and did informal surveys of what words students needed to know quite frequently and what words students seemed to not have a solid handle on. They were supposed to get a top ten and then, our chair, Amy Wheeler found the seven words that crossed the most content area disciplines and were mentioned most frequently,” Soenksen said.

The teachers of HHS are supposed to use the words of the week frequently over the next seven weeks.

“We want to make sure all of our students are familiar enough with those words that that vocabulary is not going to impede on the meaning of the content,” Soenksen said.

There will be a post-assessment at the end of the seven weeks to make sure students learned the words.