More on vocabulary...

I've been doing a bit more research. 

Vocabulary is a rope - It begins with oral language and stories (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, 1993). As instruction enters the picture, teachers add orthography, writing, and reading. Then, as folks grow, they go through stages of vocabulary development that match - of all things - spelling. We can interpret their 1: errors to determine their theories of decoding at points of difficulty and to 2: pinpoint gaps in their developmental known word bank: lexical quality, phonology, semantics, syntax, and 3 working memory and brain systems. This allows us to determine their general word knowledge and specific word knowledge with layers of schema, alphabet, pattern, and meaning within a developmental progression that ALSO - of all things - matches the History of English. Little Saxons from our German origins, Little Anglo-Normans with the Normon conquest and vowel shift, to the Greek and Latin influx during the Renaissance. (Example - muscle, muscular, musculature all came from a word for mouse in Latin - musculus. The rippling movement under the skin of a running rodent helped the Romans explain what muscles were doing when studying anatomy (Venesky, 1999; Templeton et al., 2015). History + words = meaning. So cool. 

There's more to all of this in Chapter One of the Updates Word Study (for Phonics, Spelling, and Vocabulary Instruction): Formerly Words Their Way TM. But...the question remains...how do we assess vocabulary in a way that informs instruction for vocabulary purposes? 

          Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, and Johnston recommend these assessments as a beginning: 

1. Elementary Spelling Inventory (ESI)

2. Upper Level Spelling Inventory (USI) 

3. McGuffey Qualitative Spelling Inventory