Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Explicit Vocabulary Instruction

Greetings! Hope the new school year has gotten off with a great beginning for you! We are crazy busy here at school with the new challenges the new school year brings. We are really full (lots of kids) and are creatively using our space to still teach all children on their level in reading! YAY for AMES faculty and staff!!!
Students do gain much of their word knowledge through being well read. However, explicit instruction of certain words can contribute greatly to their vocabulary development. This instruction should involve a lot of techniques that actively involve students in word learning, use discussion to teach the meanings of new words, use contextual information...how a word functions in various contexts and of course, and use the definition to give information about the word.
According to Stahl and Fairbanks (Review of Educational Research 56, 72 - 110 (1986) ), there are several instructional activities that provide students with definitional information. These include, but are not limited to:

Teach synonyms.
Teach antonyms.
Rewrite definitions.
Provide example sentences.
Provide non-examples.
Discuss the difference between the new word and related words.