Vocabulary

Teaching Metalinguistic Awareness and Reading Comprehension with Riddles

By: Marcy Zipke (2008)

Riddles are the perfect medium for learning how to manipulate language for many reasons, including students' familiarity with them and motivation for reading them. Here's how riddles can be used in the classroom to stimulate student's metalinguistic awareness.

Developing Academic Language: Got Words?

By: E. Sutton Flynt and William G. Brozo (2008)

Concerns about how to build academic vocabulary and weave its instruction into curricula are common among classroom teachers. This article reviews the research, and offers some practical suggestions for teachers.

Instruction of Metacognitive Strategies Enhances Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Achievement of Third-Grade Students

By: Regina Boulware-Gooden, Suzanne Carreker, Ann Thornhill, and R. Malatesha Joshi (2007)

The use of metacognitive strategies helps students to "think about their thinking" before, during, and after they read.

Best Practice for ELLs: Vocabulary Instruction

By: U.S. Department of Education (2007)

One way to create effective literacy instruction for English learners in the elementary grades is to provide extensive and varied vocabulary instruction.

Academic Language and ELLs

By: U.S. Department of Education (2007)

Most scholars believe that instruction in academic English — done early, consistently, and simultaneously across content areas — can make a difference in English learners’ ability to understand the core curriculum.

Talking Counts!

By: Reading Rockets (2007)

Teaching Vocabulary

By: Linda Diamond and Linda Gutlohn (2006)

Consider some excellent lesson models for teaching vocabulary, explaining idioms, fostering word consciousness, instruction for English Language Learners, and mnemonic strategies.

How Spelling Supports Reading

By: Louisa Moats (2006)

Many young readers are puzzled by the rules and exceptions of spelling. Research has shown, however, that learning to spell and learning to read rely on much of the same underlying knowledge. Read this article to learn more about the relationships between letters and sounds and how a proper understanding of spelling mechanics can lead to improved reading.

Improving Reading Skills in the Science Classroom

By: Teaching Today (2005)

Science texts are often more challenging for students than other text types. This article contains strategies teachers can use to increase reading comprehension, helping students make sense of complicated science concepts.

English Language Learners and the Five Essential Components of Reading Instruction

By: Beth Antunez (2002)

Find out how teachers can play to the strengths and shore up the weaknesses of English Language Learners in each of the Reading First content areas.

Taking Delight in Words: Using Oral Language To Build Young Children's Vocabularies

By: Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown, and Linda Kucan (2002)

Vocabulary: Instructional Guidelines and Classroom Examples

By: Partnership for Reading (2001)

This article provides examples of classroom instructional techniques as well as specific activities for helping students build their vocabularies.

Vocabulary: An Introduction

By: Partnership for Reading (2001)

The scientific research on vocabulary instruction reveals that 1) most vocabulary is learned indirectly, and 2) some vocabulary must be taught directly.

Questions About Vocabulary Instruction

By: Partnership for Reading (2001)

This article answers four common questions teachers have about vocabulary instruction, including what words to teach and how well students should know vocabulary words.

What Works in Comprehension Instruction

By: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (2000)

Comprehension is critically important to the development of children's reading skills and therefore to the ability to obtain an education. Indeed, reading comprehension has come to be the "essence of reading" (Durkin, 1993), essential not only to academic learning in all subject areas but to lifelong learning as well.

Vocabulary

By: Learning First Alliance (2000)

Knowledge of word meanings is critical to reading comprehension. Knowledge of words supports comprehension, and wide reading enables the acquisition of word knowledge.

Multisensory Vocabulary Instruction: Guidelines and Activities

By: Susan Jones (1999)

Vocabulary is a weak area for many students, but much "vocabulary instruction" ends up being handwriting practice.

Difficulties With Comprehension

By: G. Reid Lyon (1997)

Some children encounter obstacles in learning to read because they do not derive meaning from the material that they read.

Vocabulary Instruction for Reading Comprehension

By: Carl B. Smith (1997)

From webbing to semantic feature analysis, this article describes strategies for teaching vocabulary that replace memorizing definitions with building concepts.

New Words: Practical Ideas for Parents

By: Texas Education Agency (1996)

Learning the meanings of new words (vocabulary) helps children to read more complex books and stories and to learn wonderful new things. Children learn new words by being read to and by reading on their own; the more children read, the more words they are likely to know.