Increase Students' Word Strength with Weighty Words
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

Looking for a fun way to introduce multi-syllabic words to kids? Check out the creative concept behind The Weighty Word Book. This ABC book is comprised of short stories--one per letter--featuring 26 words that were selected based on frequency in written language. [read more...]

Create Sentences to Highlight Vocabulary
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011

Having students write sentences for content-area vocabulary can result in regurgitated definitions and trite statements that don't demonstrate their thinking and understanding. Spice up the traditional sentence-writing activity with a few of these more challenging tasks. [read more...]

Reading for Word Meanings
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

Informational text often includes difficult terminology and content-specific vocabulary. Struggling readers get bogged down by unfamiliar words, slowing their reading fluency and decreasing their comprehension of the text. Texts bold some vocabulary words, but what about the incidental words? [read more...]

Combine Love of Competition with Fun of Playdoh
Friday, March 4th, 2011

When targeting vocab instruction, students need multiple exposures to a word. They need to work with the word many times and in various ways. Applying the word and playing with it in different contexts helps students come to understand a concept's deep meaning. [read more...]

Two Activities to Review Essential Terms
Monday, December 13th, 2010

When you're ready to review several essential vocabulary terms at once, here are two great activities that Instructional Coach Dylan Purlee (Clark-Pleasant Community Schools in Whiteland, IN) recommends. Many have tried I Have... Who Has as a math computation activity. [read more...]

Target Essential Concept Words
Monday, October 25th, 2010

Focusing on core vocabulary within the content areas requires creating a list of grade-level specific terms that are high priority for student success in your classroom. This list would include approximately 30 terms/concepts and would receive year-long instruction-- [read more...]

Use Essential Vocabulary Terms in Variety of Sentences
Wednesday, October 14th, 2010

Research in vocabulary instruction reveals that students need numerous opportunities to work with new terms. According to Robert Marzano, a leading expert on vocabulary research, some students need upwards of 40 different workings with a word before they own it! [read more...]

Foster Opportunities for Students to Think While Learning
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

This second strategy also encourages during-reading thinking. Seat partners side by side, each with a personal copy of the day’s text. Ask the students to read silently to themselves and after a few moments, when you’ve seen the readers progressing through the text, say, "Readers, [read more...]

Parent Involvement For Literacy
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

We would all agree that the more involved a parent is in a child’s life, the more likely that child is to succeed in school. But parents don’t always know what to do. Many parents struggle with how best to help and would love some simple ways they could come alongside. With that in [read more...]

Teach Students to Read Like Writers
Friday, March 5th, 2010

Gifted & Talented teacher Gloria Horn at Bailly Elementary School (Chesterton, IN) has been encouraging the development of her students' incidental vocabulary. First, she set the tone for word collecting. Her students then became word detectives on the lookout for strong word choice. [read more...]

Simple Acrostic Poems
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

When teaching students new vocabulary words in the content areas or in language arts, one thing you could do, beyond just talking about definitions, is to have students develop an acrostic poem for that term. For example, here is an [read more...]

Targeting Vocabulary Using Visual Clues
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Robert Marzano’s research shows that for students to comprehend, retain, and master a vocabulary word, they have to work with the word multiple times and in multiple ways. In fact, the average student has to work with one word 14 times [read more...]

Developing Core Vocabulary for Each Academic Area
Friday, October 23rd, 2009

When most of you attended school, you probably had the same type of vocabulary study I did — a list of 10-20 words a week that each required a dictionary/glossary definition and a sentence using the term. After a little discussion and maybe some matching games, we’d [read more...]

Recognizing Footnotes
Thursday, January 29th, 2009

To help students understand how to use footnotes, start by teaching them to write their own. Within their next writing, ask students to find their two best words. Have them put a tiny “1″ after the first word and a tiny “2″ after the second. At the bottom of the piece, ask each student to then write the same 1 and [read more...]

Daily References Build Comprehension
Monday, January 5th, 2009

Students master vocabulary words after interacting and applying them in various contexts over time. That said, the more often you infuse your current vocabulary terms throughout the day/class period, the more quickly students master [read more...]

Maintain Vocabulary Notebooks
Monday, October 27th, 2008

As you introduce content-area vocabulary terms to students, remember Dr. Robert Marzano’s research that explains 4-14-40. The highest-achieving students can learn a new term with as few as 4 exposures to it. The average student needs to work [read more...]

Use Visuals to Support Content-Area Vocabulary
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

Vocabulary instruction has come a long way. It used to be that learning vocabulary meant temporarily memorizing definitions from the glossary, completing a couple sentence-writing activities, and then taking a test. But unless you were someone with a [read more...]

Going Beyond Vocabulary Definitions
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

More than a single definition, mastering new vocabulary words requires numerous exposures and workings with the word. One of the essential components is that students need to create a visual representation of the word [read more...]

New Game for Building Vocabulary
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Francie Blaney at River Forest High School (Hobart, IN) is following Dr. Robert Marzano's research on vocabulary development. She has developed a new word game that causes students to work multiple times with a core word. [read more...]

Action-Packed Vocabulary Review Strategies
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

There are times during the year when the students -- and you -- could use a little lift. For content area teachers, one way to get kids excited about learning again is to revive your vocabulary strategies. Getting kids up and moving and interacting will increase their learning of key terms. [read more...]

Developing Reading Vocabulary
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Educational researcher Michael Clay Thompson studied more than 35,000 passages from more than 130 English and American literature classics over the last 10 years. He has identified the top 100 words that appear with the greatest frequency in these works. [read more...]

Choosing High Energy Words
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Choosing words is kind of like choosing food from the food pyramid; that’s John Stoffel’s (Flint Springs Elementary, Huntington, IN) analogy. Young writers use words from the top of the pyramid like "make," "said," "went," and "happy" out of habit. [read more...]