The Office of Standards that provided us with new standards-aligned vocabulary strategies for our elementary grade teachers.  They are excellent and align directly with the Volume 2 LETRS training Unit 5 module teachers are working on right now.  These strategies are super simple to understand and to immediately use with any text teachers are using.  You will see when you click on the folder of strategies below how there is a one page guide for teachers that explains the strategy, provides an example, and a teacher model.  F.4.3 Standards Aligned Vocabulary Strategies 

Layering Instructional Strategies for Vocabulary

Of course, layered vocabulary instruction takes some real thought and planning, just as putting together a four-layer cake does.

So, we offer a few questions to help you reflect on each layer of your vocabulary instruction:

Layer 1: VOCABULARY RICH CLASSROOM—fostering a learning environment that floods students with rich vocabulary all day long

Do your students encounter interesting words incidentally throughout the day? 

Are you intentionally elevating your own vocabulary across the day rather than watering words down for students? 

Do you have structures for students to turn-and-talk with each other about what they are learning? And do you use these structures throughout the day, every day?

How vocabulary-rich is your environment? 

How might you improve Layer 1?

Layer 2: LANGUAGE-RICH TEXT EXPERIENCES—consistently selecting texts with rich vocabulary for shared text experiences (such as read-aloud and shared reading) and being intentional about how you engage students with the new words

Do you employ both read-aloud and shared reading in your classroom?

Do you teach the meanings of words students need to know to understand the texts during these interactive text experiences?

If so, how do you narrow down the words, and which do you pre-teach before the lesson, and which do you teach on the run during the lesson?

Do you find that students use these words later in their speech and/or writing?

How vocabulary-rich are the shared text experiences in your classroom? 

How could you improve Layer 2?

Layer 3: EXPLICIT VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION—choosing a small collection of new vocabulary words to teach explicitly

Does your literacy block routinely include time that is dedicated specifically to vocabulary work?

What does this explicit vocabulary instruction look like? 

How do you decide on which words to teach explicitly?

Do your vocabulary lessons include all four parts of explicit vocabulary instruction that make learning words easier for the brain?

Are students actively engaged in the instruction? Why or why not?

Do you find that students use these words later in their conversation and/or writing?

How confident are you in your explicit vocabulary instruction?

How could you improve Layer 3?

Layer 4: WORD AWARENESS—cultivating word awareness in your students through jokes, puns, and wordplay and encouraging a general love of words

Are your children excited about finding and using new words?

Do you intentionally embed wordplay (puns, jokes, riddles) into the classroom culture? 

Do students notice new words during their independent reading and have opportunities to share these words with you and other students?

Do you encourage students to experiment with words?

Do you have an interactive vocabulary word wall or other tools for highlighting new and important words? 

Do students apply context (clues outside the word) and morphology (clues inside the word) to figure out a word’s meaning independently?

Do students have a notebook or other tools to collect the words that interest them?

How word-aware are your students? 

How could you improve Layer 4?

If you want to dig into a larger slice of this vocabulary cake and think about these layers more deeply, you may want to take a look at Shift 3 (Chapter 3) in Shifting the Balance: Bringing the Science of Reading into the Upper Elementary Classroom (Cunningham, Burkins, & Yates 2023) or our online class by the same name. And don’t let the book title fool you; vocabulary learning is for all grades! Your students are hungry for a generous slice of vocabulary learning! A layered approach will set them up to learn more new words faster.

Jennifer Serravallo shared these  4 research based strateiges for teaching vocabulary across the day in her Sept. 23, 2024 blog post.  She writes, "As teachers we can help expand students’ vocabulary by adding vocabulary building goals to all of our lessons, and adding a vocabulary lesson structure to our repertoire of lesson types used. Below are four ways all teachers can actively, and easily, work vocabulary instruction into all subjects across the day."  See her four strategies below:

1.    Identify key words in the text ahead of time, no matter the lesson. Select only a few words for each lesson. As you read a text, think about which words your students likely not to know, and which words are most important to the learning objectives of your lesson. Scan for any Tier 2 vocabulary words in the text that will be important for them to know not only for this text but when reading others. Also consider if there are any words that expand upon vocabulary students have learned in other recent lessons. Note the words you want to highlight on your lesson plan and think about the type of support you’ll need to offer students. Maybe you’ll tuck in a quick definition. Maybe you’ll need to stop for a short discussion. No matter the subject, knowing critical words will advance your students’ understanding of the text and the content under study more generally.

2.    Think aloud definitions during the lesson.  When you come to a word in the text you planned to highlight, you might stop and offer a clear definition. If it’s a word you know your students will quickly understand, you can move on after a brief explanation. If the word requires greater clarification, you might provide synonyms or share an example. If your students remain puzzled, you’ll need to decide if you want to focus on that word during a vocabulary lesson (see tip #4) or if you should take the time to offer a deeper dive immediately. That will depend on your read of your students and how important the word is to students meeting the learning objectives of your current lesson.

3.    Teach strategies to figure out words in context. As I noted earlier, most of our vocabulary is acquired through context. One strategy is to look and see if the definition is provided in the text, perhaps set off by commas. Another is look at other text features – illustrations, side bars, headers, etc. – that provide clarity. Or, have the students read the word aloud. Perhaps they know the word but have never seen it written. Another is to remind students to look at the root of the word as one way to figure out meaning from a base they already know.

4.    Return to words students learned in context. To truly cement our knowledge of a new word, we need to go beyond definition. We need to know how to use the word, other words it is related to, concepts it represents, and what the word does not mean. You can support students’ deep processing of a word by asking yes/no and why questions, asking them to substitute another word in place of the original word where it appears in the text, and/or asking them to complete a sentence in a way that demonstrates that they understand how to use the word.

 By artfully including vocabulary building in every lesson, we can teach students to be as curious, and as excited, about new words as we are.

Roebuck Elementary’ s literacy coach, Mrs. Hankins and teacher leaders, Mrs. Nichols and Mrs. Wilson led an excellent workshop on effective vocabulary instruction for our elementary teachers in the fall of 2022.  Mrs. Nichols' presentation focused on applying research based vocabulary strategies from Beck's book, Bringing Words to Life in an early childhood classroom and Mrs. Wilson's presentation focused on applying research based strategies for integrating interactive grammar instruction into student writing through the use of mentor sentences. Their excitement for teaching and learning and their love for their students really shined in all they shared.  Mrs. Hankins has shared both of their presentation links below for you to share with your teachers.  

Please click on the slides to the right and/or the links below to view their presentations:

K-2 Grade Vocabulary Presentation:

3-8th Grade Interactive Grammar Instruction Presentation:

Thank you again Mrs. Hankins, Mrs. Nichols, and Mrs. Wilson for your continued commitment to literacy growth for your students and your willingness to serve as literacy leaders in our district.