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Teaching Vocabulary

Blast from the Past: This blog first posted August 16, 2015, and was reposted on September 25, 2021.This blog entry is an evergreen. What I mean by that I didn’t need to change a word. What it took to teach vocabulary effectively was as true then as it is now. It is important that students develop rich vocabulary. This is both an issue of knowledge of the world and language since vocabulary is the connection between these key reading assets. This blog entry straightforwardly addresses what it takes to develop this resource in our students.

Teacher question: 
What do you recommend is the best way to teach vocabulary to struggling readers at the middle school level?  

Shanahan’s response:
          I know of no special ways of teaching vocabulary to that group of students. Vocabulary is one of the many areas of instruction that one doesn’t find much in the way of interactions. What I mean by that is that usually, when it comes to teaching, what works with some kids, works with all or most kids. Struggling readers tend to be a bit slower in picking things up and consequently they tend to benefit a bit more from explicit teaching and increased repetition—but the same patterns of success are to be expected from everyone.
          Vocabulary learning is incremental and there are more words that kids need to learn than we can teach. Kids need lots of opportunities to confront words in their reading and listening. Beyond that, teachers should focus attention on some of these words, by providing explanation of the words, or having the students explaining them from context themselves. Having kids read challenging materials—that is materials that use words they might not yet know, and then drawing their attention to these words through questioning, etc. is very important. That, in fact, should be a big part of the classroom context: understanding and communicating are important in this classroom and words are a big part of that. Students need to be encouraged to pay attention to words. 
          You can also teach some particularly important or powerful words explicitly to help accelerate student progress in vocabulary. Here are some recommendations about how that teaching can be successful:

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