Mini Lessons to Support Vocabulary: A qualitative study on cooperation in teams of teachers in a multilingual school

Research in reading shows that the size of the vocabulary is an important factor when it comes to students’ reading development (National Reading Panel, 2000). The size of the vocabulary is closely connected to socioeconomic status (Hart & Risley, 1995) and institutions therefore have to compensate students from disadvantaged families. In a suburban grade 0-9 school (students age 6-16) close to Copenhagen with 93 % L2 learners, many from disadvantaged families, the National Centre for Reading is carrying out a modified lesson study project during the academic year 2016-2017. As evaluations have shown that students in this school perform poorly due to insufficient Danish, the project aims to support teachers’ ability to integrate language and especially vocabulary no matter what is on the agenda, assuming that explicit vocabulary instruction will contribute to content area learning. Although the mini-lesson project is inspired by the lesson study methodology (Cerbin & Kopp, 2006), teachers who teach different content area subjects work together. Danish teachers typically teach 2-4 content area subjects. At this particular school teachers form teams and share responsibility for e.g. all grade 4 classes. Therefore, mini- lessons focus on vocabulary learning strategies that students might apply in all contexts