Vocabulary Knowledge

Children come to school with vast differences in vocabulary knowledge.  Children in first grade from lower socio-economic backgrounds can have as little as one-half the word knowledge of their higher SES peers (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2002; Graves, Brunetti & Slater, 1982). 

Vocabulary Strategies

There are many great strategies for determining word meaning; using context clues, structural analysis, using outside resources.  But these are not enough for most children, especially struggling readers.  Strategy instruction needs to be combined with explicit vocabulary instruction (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2002; Taylor, Mraz, Nichols, Rickelman & Wood, 2009).

Daily and Ongoing!

Explicit vocabulary instruction needs to daily and ongoing.  In order for vocabulary instruction to really "stick", students need to have mutliple exposures to words in context and in a meaningful way (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2002; Baumann, Ware & Edwards, 2007).  Visit our Strategies page for ideas to make your vocabulary instruction daily and ongoing. 

Tier II vs. Content Vocabulary

It is essential that students be instructed in content vocabulary.  However, it is of equal (or more!) importance to engage in daily explicit instruction in Tier II words.  These are words that occur in students' everyday independent reading, are not content related and are often difficult to define using context clues (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2002).