Building Vocabulary - Take 1

Vocabulary building is huge – ask any reading specialist. They will tell you that the bigger the person’s vocabulary, the easier reading (and probably all other subjects) is and the better the person’s comprehension. If you’ve ever tried to read anything technical without having the vocabulary background, you know this is true. My daughter is playing rugby in college this year, and reading an account of one of her games is like experiencing a new language, except I can read all words – I just don’t know what they mean. And I’m fortunate this year to again be working with ELL students, who experience that disconnect on a daily basis. So I’m once again thinking a lot about how to build up all students’ vocabularies, so that everyone can be more successful in school.

There’s no doubt that most of us learn most of our new words through reading. We rarely stop to look most of them up, but instead use context clues to help us make sense of the words. If I come across something new enough times, I may look it up, but otherwise reading broadly across multiple genres will give me (and my students) exposure to many words, both words directly connected to a subject, and other, more commonly used words. So like most teachers, I try to provide lots of reading opportunities with a variety of sources.

I also try to foster word consciousness – getting students to be more aware of words, particularly ones they haven’t seen, or ones they find interesting. One way I’ve done this is just a poster where we can write these words. I ask that the students notice interesting words in their reading, write them on a post-it, and then give it to me to approve before writing their words up on the poster. I didn’t do this last year, and we got some words that were either commonly known, or were names that didn’t really help us either. I’m hoping a little more oversight on my part will raise the quality of this activity.

Another related activity is putting up a long strip of adding machine tape, and asking students to add content-related words. The caveat is that they can’t repeat any words, so they have to read what is already written down before adding their words. I’ve done this particularly with social studies units, and students are often very eager to add something new. I think it would work great with science or math units as well, and it encourages students to be aware of the technical words connected with their studies.

The last activity I’ll mention is using alphaboxes. I first saw these in Linda Hoyt’s book Reflect, Revisit, Retell , and if you Google alphaboxes, you can find templates. I use these most with nonfiction, especially in guided reading groups, but you could certainly use them for fiction as well. Students add words to the boxes (one box per alphabet letter, with space for several words) that they think are important to what they are reading about. I only tell them that they need to be able to justify why they added each word if I were to ask. 

At the end of the book or article, I may ask them to pick 5 words off the sheet and tell why they are important to the subject, or pick 10 words and use them as part of a summary. Students are then held accountable for learning the meanings, not just aimlessly writing them down.

I would love to hear what other people do to build vocabulary with their students.  Even if your students aren’t learning English as a second language, a bigger, richer vocabulary can only help them in reading and in life.