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When teachers engage in intentional and
ambitious efforts to build vocabulary
and content knowledge, they support
students literacy learning. In this
classroom, the teacher prepares to teach
specific vocabulary words by selecting
Tier two and Tier three words from
literature informational text and from
content area curricula. Teaching
vocabulary is important because if
students don't know what the vocabulary
words mean, they're gonna have a hard
time comprehending what the story is
about, and also if we're doing a read
aloud and they don't understand the
concept, then they're gonna have a really
hard time discussing that concept.
So, if I want to teach vocabulary, I try and
find books that have a broad range of
vocabulary in them, specifically words
that I think students won't already know,
and then if I'm teaching an
informational text, I find books where
they're using those words that have that
same content. So I have one book called
'Upstairs Mouse, Downstairs Mole.' One of
the vocabulary words that I thought was
important in this text was tidy. One of
the chapters discusses a lot about how
Mouse and Mole like their homes tidy, and
I thought that since how that whole
chapter was about clean and tidy, that
students would really need to know what
that word means.
So, I would teach the word tidy before I
read the chapter, and then I also found
some other vocabulary words that I would
just teach while I'm reading. For example,
damp, I would simply just read the word
damp, and then I would tell them that
damp means slightly wet. Some of the
other words that I chose were - one was
selfish. I would quickly just define that
word within the text and say selfish
means thinking only about one's own self.
I'll use vocabulary in the classroom
like, if we're cleaning up at the end of
the day I might say, 'make your space tidy!'
and then kids will start using that
themselves. It's good to figure out your
child-friendly explanations before you
start reading because sometimes it's
very tricky to figure out how you want
to explain it right on the spot.
I found these child-friendly
explanations just by reading the text
and then trying to find a simple way to
define that. So, when I'm reading
informational text, I pick out the words
that I think the students are going to
need to know first to be able to
comprehend the text. I also pick words
that are important to the content of our
curriculum and for the book. In my
informational book, I chose the word beam
and beam has to do with light, but it
also has another meaning, so we would
make sure that we discussed what a light
beam is compared to what a balance beam
might be. I would like my students to use
their vocabulary when they're discussing
the topic or the content. I'd like them
to be able to use it in their writing
and I would like them to use it when
they're reading and they come to those
words in the book. One word that my
students like to use now when they're
getting hungry, is they like to use the
word famished. It makes it sound very
dramatic when we're on our way to lunch.
They tell me that they're famished. I
worry about vocabulary teaching
vocabulary right now because it's just
going to get trickier as the students
get older and the harder books that they
start to read, so it's good to start
teaching it at this young age so that
their vocabulary increases as they
increase in age.
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Learn more at literacyessentials.org
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