Strategies to Build Student Vocabulary

Strong Vocabulary contributes to reading comprehension. When sharing vocabulary with students, teachers need to be explicit and direct in teaching and using the vocabulary in their classrooms. Research suggests that educators focus on four practices that help bring words alive for their students (Blachowicz and Fisher, 2004)

1) Develop word awareness and love of words through word play. Several strategies are included in the attached document to focus on this aspect of vocabulary development. Student create meaning by playing with words.

2) Develop explicit, rich instruction to build vocabulary. Blachowicz and Fisher suggest the STAR model because it provides explicit vocabulary instruction. The model for STAR is on page 5 of the attached document.

3) Building strategies for independence. Helping students learn to understand vocabulary by using context cues, word parts, and dictionaries can lead to word ownership. However, teachers need to explicitly teach students how to use these tools to develop the skills needed to make use of context clues, word parts and dictionaries.

4) Engage students actively with a wide range of books. Exposing students to many forms of literature in a variety of ways- including reading aloud to and with them- helps students develop broad vocabularies.