Vocabulary: Instructional Guidelines and Classroom Examples

Vocabulary instruction techniques

Teaching specific words

A teacher plans to have his third-grade class read the novel Stone Fox, by John Reynolds Gardiner. In this novel, a young boy enters a dogsled race in hopes of winning prize money to pay the taxes on his grandfather’s farm. The teacher knows that understanding the concept of taxes is important to understanding the novel’s plot. Therefore, before his students begin reading the novel, the teacher may do several things to make sure that they understand what the concept means and why it is important to the story. For example, the teacher may:

• engage students in a discussion of the concept of taxes; and/or
• read a sentence from the book that contains the word taxes and ask students to use context and their prior knowledge to try to figure out what it means.

To solidify their understanding of the word, the teacher might ask students to use the word taxes in their own sentences.

Word learning strategies

Of course, it is not possible for teachers to provide specific instruction for all the words their students do not know. Therefore, students also need to be able to determine the meaning of words that are new to them but not taught directly to them. They need to develop effective word-learning strategies. Word-learning strategies include:

• how to use dictionaries and other reference aids to learn word meanings and to deepen knowledge of word meanings;
• how to use information about word parts to figure out the meanings of words in text; and
• how to use context clues to determine word meanings.

Using dictionaries and other reference aids

Students must learn how to use dictionaries, glossaries, and thesauruses to help broaden and deepen their knowledge of words, even though these resources can be difficult to use. The most helpful dictionaries include sentences providing clear examples of word meanings in context.

As his class reads a text, a second-grade teacher discovers that many of his students do not know the meaning of the word board, as in the sentence, “The children were waiting to board the buses.” The teacher demonstrates how to find board in the classroom dictionary, showing students that there are four different definitions for the word. He reads the definitions one at a time, and the class discusses whether each definition would fit the context of the sentence. The students easily eliminate the inappropriate definitions of board, and settle on the definition, “to get on a train, an airplane, a bus, or a ship.”

The teacher next has students substitute the most likely definition for board in the original sentence to verify that it is “The children were waiting to get on the buses” that makes the best sense.

Using word parts

Word parts include affixes (prefixes and suffixes), base words, and word roots.

Affixes

are word parts that are “fixed to” either the beginnings of words (prefixes) or the ending of words (suffixes). The word disrespectful has two affixes, a prefix (dis-) and a suffix (-ful).

Base words

are words from which many other words are formed. For example, many words can be formed from the base word migrate: migration, migrant, immigration, immigrant, migrating, migratory.

Word roots

are the words from other languages that are the origin of many English words. About 60% of all English words have Latin or Greek origins.

Knowing some common prefixes and suffixes (affixes), base words, and root words can help students learn the meanings of many new words. For example, if students learn just the four most common prefixes in English (un-, re-, in-, dis-), they will have important clues about the meaning of about two thirds of all English words that have prefixes. Prefixes are relatively easy to learn because they have clear meanings (for example, un- means “not” and re- means “again”); they are usually spelled the same way from word to word; and, of course, they always occur at the beginnings of words.

Learning suffixes can be more challenging than learning prefixes. This is because some suffixes have more abstract meanings than do prefixes. For example, learning that the suffix -ness means “the state or quality of” might not help students figure out the meaning of kindness. Other suffixes, however, are more helpful, for example, -less, which means “without” (hopeless, thoughtless); and -ful, which means “full of” (hopeful, thoughtful).

Latin and Greek word roots are found commonly in content-area school subjects, especially in the subjects of science and social studies. As a result, Latin and Greek word parts form a large proportion of the new vocabulary that students encounter in their content-area textbooks. Teachers should teach the word roots as they occur in the texts students read. Furthermore, teachers should teach primarily those root words that students are likely to see often.

Here are some examples of how to use word parts in teaching vocabulary:

• A second-grade teacher wants to teach her students how to use the base word play as a way to help them think about the meanings of new words they will encounter in reading. To begin, she has students brainstorm all the words or phrases they can think of that are related to play. The teacher records their suggestions: player, playful, playpen, ballplayer, and playing field. Then she has the class discuss the meaning of each of their proposed words and how it relates to play.
• A third-grade teacher identifies the base word note. He then sets up a “word wall,” and writes the word note at the top of the wall. As his students read, the teacher has them look for words that are related to note and add them to the wall. Throughout their reading, they gradually add to the wall the words notebook, notation, noteworthy, and notable.

Using context clues

Context clues are hints about the meaning of an unknown word that are provided in the words, phrases, and sentences that surround the word. Context clues include definitions, restatements, examples, or descriptions. Because students learn most word meanings indirectly, or from context, it is important that they learn to use context clues effectively.

Not all contexts are helpful, however. Some contexts give little information about a word’s meaning. An example of an unhelpful context is the sentence, “We heard the back door open, and then recognized the buoyant footsteps of Uncle Larry.” A number of possible meanings of buoyant could fit this context, including heavy, lively, noisy, familiar, dragging, plodding, and so on. Instruction in using context clues as a word-learning strategy should include the idea that some contexts are more helpful than others.