Vocabulary Building Strategies for the Classroom
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Build student vocabulary with these 3 strategies. Effective instruction means students are not only hearing new information, but understanding new information.
As students progress in school their reading and vocabulary must progress as well. If a student has poor understanding of vocabulary, they are automatically at a large disadvantage to succeed. This makes it important for them to increase their knowledge and range of vocabulary in order to keep up with the content and do well in school. It is important for teachers to ensure that students are not just memorizing content, but that they understand the content being taught. The following are 3 strategies to improve vocabulary understanding in the classroom:
1. Word Wall: Create a space in the classroom for a word wall where new terms can be posted with their definitions.
2. Word Journals: Encourage students to maintain word journals where they record new words they have learned. They can record the new words in a three-column format with definitions, examples, and a visual cue.
3. Marzano’s 6 Step Vocabulary strategy:
Step 1: Explain the new term — the teacher provides a description of the term in a way the students can understand, and may give an example.
Step 2: Restate the term — using their own words, students share the description, explanation, or example of the term.
Step 3: Show the term — students are asked to depict the term using an image, symbol, or graphic representation. Step 4: Discuss the terms — the teacher will engage the students in discussions involving newly learned terms. These could involve synonyms, antonyms, comparisons between different terms, and so on.
Step 5: The students are given time to look at the terms in their notebook and share the terms, explanations, images or graphical representations with their peers.
Step 6: Learning games — play games with students that involve the use of words from their vocabulary notebooks for extra practice.
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