What components comprise high-quality reading instruction?

Folio 7: Vocabulary

students raising handsVocabulary refers to a knowledge of words and what they hateful. Students learn vocabulary through a variety of contexts such equally talking, interacting, and playing with others; listening to stories; watching tv set; and attention school. In that location are two types of vocabulary:

  • Oral vocabulary refers to the recognition of words that we hear and speak.
  • Reading vocabulary refers to the recognition of words that we read and write.

Why Should I Teach It?

Though students can learn the basics of phonemic awareness and phonics without having a big vocabulary, research shows that beginning readers with a relatively extensive vocabulary will have an easier fourth dimension recognizing printed words. Conversely, students who brainstorm school with poor vocabularies are at a large disadvantage. These students tend to have a difficult time with fluency and comprehension, potentially leading to a dislike of reading. Afterwards, this dislike triggers an abstention of reading, preventing students from learning new vocabulary and, thus, creates a negative cycle that results in poor academic achievement. In add-on to affecting bookish skills, a poor vocabulary impacts students in social situations.

Research Shows

  • Students' reading comprehension and overall success relates strongly to the extent of their vocabulary knowledge.
    (Lehr et al., 2006)
  • The human relationship of vocabulary to reading comprehension gets stronger as reading material becomes more than complex and the vocabulary becomes more extensive.
    (Verhoeven and Snow, 2002)

How Practice I Teach It?

When Should I Teach Information technology?

Vocabulary pedagogy typically begins in kindergarten and continues through third course and beyond.

Vocabulary instruction should occur in all grades considering information technology benefits all students regardless of the students' reading levels.

Students learn new vocabulary through indirect and direct methods:

  • Indirect vocabulary instruction involves students' learning words and their meanings through daily conversations and through contained reading. Teachers need to consistently utilise new and interesting words as function of classroom instruction. More than important, teachers need to read out loud to students and encourage them to read independently.
  • Directly vocabulary educational activity involves the intentional focus on words and their meanings. Teachers need to utilize a diverseness of methods to help students learn new vocabulary words directly.

Direct educational activity helps students to learn new vocabulary, especially words essential to understanding specific lessons; all the same, research has demonstrated that most students are able to learn only 8–10 new words per week through direct instruction. Research also shows that elementary students should learn approximately 3,000 new words each year. This means that if students are learning approximately 400 words per year through directly instruction and then they must learn the remaining 2,600 words through indirect pedagogy. Therefore, teachers should provide opportunities for both direct and indirect vocabulary educational activity.

Review the table below for an explanation of each blazon of direct and indirect pedagogy and for an example of each.

Vocabulary Teaching
Author characters
What? What It Is How To Implement
indirect Incidental teaching New words are learned by happenstance or naturally through the context of the students' environment.
  • Innovate unfamiliar words during daily interactions with students.
  • Utilise new words in songs, or ask students to read books that incorporate new words.
direct Explicit vocabulary instruction Teachers clearly demonstrate or explain what a discussion ways.
  • Utilise discussions, pictures, and examples to expose students to the new word.
  • Relate the give-and-take to students' lives.
  • Engage in activities that require students to use the new word.

Past demonstrating the usefulness of words, teachers employ straight instruction to assistance students develop their vocabulary. For instance, teachers can prove students how authors choose particular words to convey certain meanings. In this video, the teacher demonstrates to her course the utilize of word cards and a word web to develop vocabulary skills (time: 1:23).

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View Transcript

Transcript: Vocabulary

Teacher: We've been studying a unit of measurement on penguins, and today we're going to view some of the words that we've learned.

Narrator: She develops students' sensation of interesting words and concepts.

Instructor: Ohhhhhh, I similar this word. Everybody say this word.

Students: "Rookery."

Instructor: Who can tell me something about this discussion that has to practise with a penguin? William?

William: One million penguins tin can live in a rookery.

Teacher: Exactly! That's a lot of what?

Students: Penguins.

Narrator: Later on, the grade brainstorms to record and categorize new words they've learned.

Teacher: Nosotros're going to come upward with some vocabulary words that will go with each one of these areas. And we're going to begin with consume. Now I want you to think most all the facts and all the books that we've read nearly penguins, and I desire you lot to recollect of something that penguins eat. Chaney?

Chaney: Krill.

Teacher: Wow, that's a good word. Can you tell me what a krill is, considering we don't use that discussion very often?

Chaney: It'south like a small shrimp.

Teacher: Excellent!

Narrator: Word maps reinforce students' agreement of give-and-take relationships, enhancing comprehension.

Visuals, such as graphic organizers and content word walls, back up vocabulary development for all readers.

Here are some helpful hints on how teachers tin incorporate vocabulary educational activity in the classroom:

Tips for Teaching

  • Be aware of factors that influence vocabulary instruction:
    • Students' learning strengths and weaknesses
    • Complication of the words
    • Students' familiarity with the concepts represented by new words
  • Determine important vocabulary to teach earlier asking students to read about them in texts, and consider:
    • How important the discussion is to the unit of measurement of study
    • To what extent the word is useful exterior the context of the lesson
    • Whether there are words the students tin acquire on their own through the context of the lesson
    • Whether at that place are words in the unit of measurement of written report that may motivate students to learn other new words
  • Provide repeated exposure to words.
  • Develop activities that allow students to apply words across different contexts.
  • Engage students in discussions that include new vocabulary.
  • Make available a number of expert books (both narrative and expository) on a variety of topics.
  • Encourage independent learning of new vocabulary from context.
  • Teach meanings of prefixes, suffixes, and common root words.
  • When didactics vocabulary direct, apply a diversity of strategies for teaching a word's pregnant (eastward.g., simple definition, synonyms, antonyms, good examples and bad examples, models, pictures, demos).
  • During vocabulary instruction, words should be introduced in a context with which students are already familiar.
  • When both the give-and-take and the concept are unknown, the word should be taught explicitly in social club to increase comprehension.

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