Pre-Teaching Vocabulary

Advice for Pre-teaching Vocabulary

1. Use an image that really isolates the meaning.

DEVASTATION:

2. Make sure the word is ESSENTIAL for comprehension.

3. Give a really good sentence so that the meaning in the sentence is clear.

After the terrible storm, the people saw the devastation. The people cried and worried about their futures.

4. Use a simple definition: Devastation - When everything is ruined or destroyed.

5. Use short but effective activities to promote processing

Matching:

This short activity will help them process the word and use it as a reference on their desk as they read.

Association activity:

This could be discussion or word map. The idea behind an association activity is to get the students to associate the word devastation with other words that they already know; this helps it connect to schema. Words associated could be: sadness, destruction, ambulance, hospital,death, hero, nightmares. The list and ideas are individual to students' background. Most of all it gets students thinking and connecting.

Think, Pair, Share:

Ask students to turn to a partner and explain the words. With this activity, the students share and discuss, and this scaffolds weaker learners and lets them produce their thoughts, which is good for memory and understanding.

Movement Activity:

Ask students to get up, go around the room and meet with several students to explain the words. Use a timer or a bell to let them know when to switch to a new person. This can be a good way to get students warmed up. Movement is good. Talking with classmates is good.

Sentence writing:

It sounds simple, but ask the students to make simple sentence that shows its meaning. For example, it is easy to make a sentence but challenging to make sentences that show the real meaning of a word

Poor sentence example: There was devastation.

*This sentence is too simple and gives no indication student understanding of the word.

Good sentence example: The hurricane caused devastation, and the people had to find new homes.

*Notice that the idea that people had to find new homes means that the student sees the relationship between devastation and not being able to live there.

Drawing pictures:

This is an excellent production task to see into the minds of your students. We can draw pictures of things we understand.

Thanks to Emily S.

From this picture, the teacher can see that devastation is associated with a storm in the mind of the student. There is a damaged building and and upside down car. So, in the mind of the student, the storm causes devastation.

Word Mapping: In this activity students map the word and all its meanings and definitions. It is a good student-centered way to engage the students in vocabulary preparation. See the example below. A worksheet like this can be a very effective way to get students to process (think) about the word.

Click to go to website

Thanks to Emily S.

Here is another great example of a word map.

Scrambled sentences:

This is short, effective and easy to create. This also lets them think about the way the word should be used in a sentence.

In this example, the students must think about the words to construct a meaningful sentence. This website will help you create these scrambled sentences very efficiently.

Cloze activity:

This also is short, effective and easy to create. This lets students read and fill in the blanks. Use blanks for only the target words. Here are lots of examples of cloze activities. This helps the students use the context to apply and process the vocabulary.

Self-created dictionary:

The students could look the words up (if a good English/Arabic dictionary is available)and create a reference for them when they read. This can even be done the day before and then review on the day of the reading. However, be cautious of the time; sometimes students may take a long time to look them up. Or, they could make a picture dictionary.

Things to Remember

Preparation for reading comprehension only -- don’t let your reading lesson be a vocabulary lesson. The goal is to get them to process the vocabulary in a meaningful way so it helps during the reading.

The goal is that they will recognize the word in the text and use the meaning to build comprehension.

Making the definition available for them to reference during the reading, either on their desk, board or poster board.