What is vocabulary instruction?
Vocabulary is one’s knowledge and awareness of words and their meanings. Teachers are constantly responsible for teaching students new words. Vocabulary instruction can occur in a variety ways and for many different reasons. Teachers are tasked with the job of making the learning of vocabulary an engaging and valuable thing for all students in their class, regardless of their linguistic background (Blachowicz & Fisher, 2007).
This is no easy task, but this website will supply you with information and resources that can help you develop vocabulary rich students. Before we get into the details of instruction, it is important that we look a little closer at exactly what vocabulary is. Vocabulary can be broken down into three tiers (Fountas & Pinnell, 2009).
Tier one words are basic high frequency words that can be used everyday; such as bug, door, cup, etc. Tier two words are those that can be generalized across content areas. Some examples of tier two words include: analyze, evaluate, predict, assume, document, error, etc. Tier three words are content specific words that are not used frequently unless discussing a particular topic. They include words like scalene triangle, slope, genre, idiom, etc. To get your most bang for your buck, it is important that teachers are instructing their students on tier two vocabulary words, also know as academic vocabulary.
This is no easy task, but this website will supply you with information and resources that can help you develop vocabulary rich students. Before we get into the details of instruction, it is important that we look a little closer at exactly what vocabulary is. Vocabulary can be broken down into three tiers (Fountas & Pinnell, 2009).
Tier one words are basic high frequency words that can be used everyday; such as bug, door, cup, etc. Tier two words are those that can be generalized across content areas. Some examples of tier two words include: analyze, evaluate, predict, assume, document, error, etc. Tier three words are content specific words that are not used frequently unless discussing a particular topic. They include words like scalene triangle, slope, genre, idiom, etc. To get your most bang for your buck, it is important that teachers are instructing their students on tier two vocabulary words, also know as academic vocabulary.
Here are some more resources about the three tiers of vocabulary:
Why is vocabulary instruction important?
In order to have academic success in any content area it is important to have a strong vocabulary. This does not just refer to being able to understand the meaning of a word while reading a text, but also being able to use these words in their oral vocabulary. Without a strong oral vocabulary, a reader can not effectively implement their decoding strategies, which in turn will make it more difficult to comprehend what one is reading (Guth & Pratt-Fartro, 2010).
Here is more information about why vocabulary is important: