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 with a word up to 14 times in order to master it. And your most struggling learners need as many as 40 different opportunities to work with a single word to finally learn it.

That said, students should maintain their thinking about your terms in an on-going resource — like a vocabulary notebook. Every time you work with a word (e.g. definition of the word, sentences using the word, synonyms for the word, examples of the word, etc.), the students can jot this information into their vocabulary notebooks. This resource also makes for a great study guide.

To view common notebook templates, download these samples.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Vocabulary, Vocabulary & Word Choice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.