Are you a vocabulary teacher? Yes, you are! All teachers are vocabulary teachers, whether they know it or not. It’s so because the subject content and the content vocabulary are inherently linked. If teachers want to teach the content, they must also teach the content vocabulary.
Traditionally, vocabulary instruction is most closely associated with reading instruction because effective vocabulary instruction improves reading comprehension. And we all know that reading comprehension is essential. However, studies also link vocabulary to academic achievement, socioeconomic disparity, and even intelligence. Since vocabulary instruction is so important, let’s discover how to become highly effective vocabulary teachers!
Vocabulary Breadth and Vocabulary Depth
What does it mean to know a word? What is a good vocabulary? The answers to these questions lie in the concepts of Vocabulary Breadth and Vocabulary Depth.
1. Vocabulary Depth: Have you ever heard a person use a word in a way that was not quite right… or flat out wrong? Although the person is familiar with the word, the person’s DEPTH of understanding is lacking. The person does not fully understand the meaning of the word. Many people avoid using words for which they have a shallow depth of understanding. Others like Sheridan’s infamous Mrs. Malaprop use words with reckless abandon.
2. Vocabulary Breadth: Vocabulary breadth is vocabulary size—it’s the number of known words. However, a known word may just mean that a person recognizes a word as valid. Many vocabulary tests primarily measure vocabulary size. For example, a vocabulary test may ask a person if a word is or isn’t a real word. People who are familiar with many words and advanced word structure will score well.
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How to Teach Vocabulary: Activate Your Students’ Reticular Activating System (RAS) for Words
If you are a coin collector, you look at and notice coins regularly. You can’t help yourself because your Reticular Activating System (RAS) is activated regarding coins. As teachers, we want to activate our students’ Reticular Activating System (RAS) regarding words.
So, what is the Reticular Activating System (RAS)? The Reticular Activating System (RAS) is a network of neurons in our brain that helps us decide what to pay attention to and what to ignore. In short, our brain helps us notice what is important to us and ignore what is unimportant.
For example, if you are thinking of buying a new car, you start noticing cars. If you begin to think you may want to buy a mini-van, you start seeing mini-vans everywhere you go.
Part of the battle in teaching vocabulary skills is activating our students’ Reticular Activating System (RAS) for words. Students have new and exciting words in front of them all day long, so we want to engage our students in a way that they begin to notice them and take an interest in them.
To be clear, to maximize our writing and language arts instruction across the curriculum, we want to activate our students’ Reticular Activating System (RAS) regarding the language arts in general, not just vocabulary words. Remember that to activate your students’ Reticular Activating System (RAS), you must first activate your own. Put simply, become more interested in and enthusiastic about words, writing, and language!
A Balanced Approach: Incidental Learning and Vocabulary Skills
Incidental vocabulary learning means that students learn words in the classroom and out of the classroom as they experience life. They don’t intend to learn the words, and they don’t plan to learn words, but they learn them all the same.
Students must learn a shockingly large number of words each year just to stay even. In fact, students must learn so many words that it’s impossible to teach them all one by one. Researchers are still trying to figure out how students learn so many words each year, but incidental learning is undoubtedly a large piece of the puzzle. Students learn vocabulary incidentally both in school and out of school by reading, writing, listening, and speaking. It will come as no surprise to most teachers that wide and extensive reading is crucial.
Having said that, we can’t trust incidental learning alone. And since we can’t teach all the required vocabulary word by word, we want to teach vocabulary skills while teaching vocabulary words. When we teach vocabulary skills, we give students the tools they will need to figure out words independently. Furthermore, when we teach things as skills, we are more likely to engage students and create interest.
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The 12 Categories of Vocabulary Skills
Teaching vocabulary skills is a multi-faceted activity. In fact, it comes down to teaching at least six things: 1) the meaning of words, 2) the relationships between words, 3) how words are constructed and derived, 4) how to figure out or infer the meaning of words, 5) how to research the meaning of words, and 6) how to use words. The more teachers understand this fact, the more effective they will be at teaching vocabulary skills across the curriculum.
Now, here are the 12 Categories of Vocabulary Skills:
1. World-Building and Morphology: prefixes, suffixes, roots, derivatives, related words, compound words, contractions, changing parts of speech
2. Etymology, Word Origin, Derivation
3. Dictionary Work, Definitions, Thesaurus Work
4. Context Clues
5. Word Families
6. Synonyms, Antonyms
7. Homonyms, Homophones, Homographs, Multiple Meaning Words
8. Syllables, Spelling, Decoding
9. High-Frequency Words, Academic Vocabulary, Subject-Specific Vocabulary, Common and Useful Vocabulary, Essential Grade-Level Vocabulary, Commonly Confused Words
10. Word Analogies
11. Figurative Language and Idioms
12. Word Choice
What Do Teachers Already Do to Teach Vocabulary and Vocabulary Skills Across the Curriculum?
Vocabulary skills are wide-ranging, and we all already teach vocabulary skills to some degree. Our goal here is twofold: 1) to better understand what we are already doing, and 2) to learn how we can build on that. Let’s first consider what teachers already do to teach vocabulary across the curriculum. We will look at this topic in three different ways: 1) by subject, 2) by type of resource, and 3) by activity type.
To do this, we will explore seven categories: 1) Science and Social Studies, 2) Core Language-Arts Curriculums, 3) Supplemental Word-Focused Vocabulary Curriculums, 4) Supplemental Word-Building and Morphology Vocabulary Curriculums, 5) Teacher Collected Supplemental Materials, 6) Previewing Selected Words Across the Curriculum, and 7) Evidence-Based and Popular Vocabulary Activities and Strategies.
Let’s begin!
1. Science and Social Studies: Most science and social studies curriculums have some basic vocabulary instruction. This instruction is often found in sections called “Key Vocabulary,” “Building Your Vocabulary,” or “Vocabulary Preview.” Additionally, these curriculums often place vocabulary words in boldface or highlighted text, and they may include some vocabulary instruction in sidebars. The more teachers are skilled at and enthusiastic about teaching vocabulary, the more this instruction will land.
2. Core Language-Arts Curriculums: Most core language-arts curriculums have a vocabulary component. Curriculums often include this component as a separate extension booklet from which teachers (almost never) make copies for students. In addition to this extension booklet, curriculums include basic vocabulary instruction inside the curriculum.
In reality, most teachers do what is required and embedded in their regular language arts curriculum. When they look at their collection of extension and review booklets, the booklets don’t seem like a great use of time. In short, teachers look at their vocabulary booklets and think, “This isn’t what I was hoping it would be. It’s nothing more than filling in blanks.”
3. Supplemental Word-Focused Vocabulary Curriculums: These supplemental materials often resemble the extension booklets from a language-arts curriculum. They focus on having students work with words to create meaning. They don’t teach skills; they just teach the meaning of words. Once again, these curriculums are little more than filling in blanks. I’m not saying that these curriculums are not without any value, but who has the time for this? It’s not going to pay off in a meaningful way.
4. Supplemental Word-Building and Morphology Vocabulary Curriculums: Although some of these look excellent and interesting, I’ll point out three problem areas:
a. Most of these curriculums focus on words and topics that don’t relate to what we teach our students across the curriculum. Is this a wise use of time? I would prefer to use one that focuses on advanced academic vocabulary and word parts (roots, suffixes, and prefixes) so that when my students open up their textbooks, they see the connection. Note: These are hard to find!
b. Most of these curriculums don’t provide overarching new skills or insights right from the start. They are lesson-by-lesson curriculums, where every lesson is a tiny piece of the puzzle. So if teachers only complete the first few sections, it’s been a waste of time. Of course, teachers always think they will have time for the complete supplemental curriculums, but we often discover that we don’t. In reality, page one (as every page) should teach students how to approach, dissect, and understand the words that they will find in their textbooks. Teachers should be able to say, “We only did the first 30 pages, but it was time well spent.”
c. Many of these curriculums are organize topically like a regular textbook. It’s not all interconnected and building and with constant review. Students think, “Now that I have completed this section, I can forget it! It’s not important anymore.”
5. Teacher Collected Supplemental Materials: Teachers often know their goals and what they have the time for, so they seek out and find the materials they need one by one. We all know the benefits this provides and the problems that it creates.
» Benefits: Teachers target what they want to target in the time that they have.
» Problems: Teachers spend valuable time collecting and piecing together what they need. Teachers often don’t find what they need, so they end up creating the materials they need to fill in the gaps.
6. Previewing Selected Words Across the Curriculum: Curriculums often preview the meaning of selected words to help students understand the texts they are about to read. This previewing of vocabulary words is a fast way to get students to learn essential vocabulary words.
Personally, I’ve never liked this kind of instruction: (a) It’s boring, (b) It’s often not enough words to make a significant difference, (c) It’s often the wrong words, (d) It’s usually done primarily through extensive teacher talk, (e) It doesn’t create any skills or plant any seeds of knowledge or engage students, and (f) It usually takes words that we could teach in context out of context.
Admittedly, this previewing of selected vocabulary words is essential, but it is not a vocabulary skills solution.
7. Evidence-Based and Popular Vocabulary Activities and Strategies: Researchers have identified many evidence-based vocabulary activities and strategies that get results. The research says that teachers should develop skill with a small arsenal of these techniques to teach vocabulary properly—i.e., in context, in the subject content, and with purpose. Some of these activities and strategies are quite common and popular.
List of Activities and Strategies: Semantic maps, word maps, word webs, word categories, Frayer model, scavenger hunt, word sorts, act it out, vocabulary self-collection strategy (VSS), Marzano’s Six Steps, vocabulary games, around the world, vocabulary journals entries, three tiers of vocabulary, repetition, word consciousness, morphological instruction, context clues, student-friendly definitions, word walls, cloze, and many more.
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Vocabulary Instruction Example: Sixth Grade Science Book
I try to connect what I teach students through isolated skill drills (worksheets, curriculums, etc.) to what we are learning across the curriculum. It’s easy to connect vocabulary skills, word building, and morphology to anything you teach across the curriculum with a little practice.
Let me be clear. To do what follows, many teachers will need to freshen up their vocabulary skills. Be sure to read my free eBook How to Improve Your Students’ Vocabulary by Teaching Word Building and Morphology: Roots, Bases, Stems, Prefixes, Suffixes, and Morphemes. Additionally, you will need a few resources. With these five resources, you can find the entire history of any word:
1. Google search a word using: “the word” + “etymology”
3. Wikipedia’s old version of List of Greek and Latin Roots and Prefixes
4. Wikipedia’s List of Medical Roots, Suffixes, and Prefixes
5. Word Finder: Search for words using “starts with,” “ends with,” and “contains.”
On the Front Board: In the following example, I’m not telling you exactly what to do. I’m showing you what you can do to get you thinking. You can plan and prepare for this activity or do it as a class on the front board.
Step 1: Select Words
Open up a science book and list 5-10 of the longest, most interesting multi-syllable words in a lesson or chapter. Here are some words my class pulled from a single 6th-grade science lesson:
» thermal, temperature, lukewarm, kinetic, visualizing, diameter, meteorite, atmosphere, particles, evidence, tremendous, potential, gravitational, elastic, chemical, energy, atoms, molecules
Step 2: Word with Morphemes
Be sure to download the List of Greek and Latin Roots and Prefixes and the List of Medical Roots, Suffixes, and Prefixes. Use these lists (and/or other resources) to analyze the words you have chosen. With practice, both you and your students will be able to look at most words and identify one or more morphemes; after that, you won’t need to break out your lists quite so often.
Once again, be sure to read my free eBook How to Improve Your Students’ Vocabulary by Teaching Word Building and Morphology: Roots, Bases, Stems, Prefixes, Suffixes, and Morphemes. You will not guide your students effectively in this kind of word analysis across the curriculum if you don’t have a solid morphology model in mind.
Once again, here are the words my class pulled from a single 6th-grade science lesson:
» thermal, temperature, lukewarm, kinetic, visualizing, diameter, meteorite, atmosphere, particles, evidence, tremendous, potential, gravitational, elastic, chemical, energy, atoms, molecules
What are we going to do with these words? The activities you undertake with your class and the benefits will depend on your understanding of vocabulary skills and morphology. Here is a basic exercise that any teacher can do using the resources I’ve already linked to.
Step 2a: As a class or individually, list some of the morphemes (prefixes, suffixes, and roots) that you find in the list of words you have selected. Here are some of them from our list above:
» therm-, temper-, -al, kine-, vis-/vid-, -ing, dia-, -ence, vis-, -ical, spere, -ial, -al, meter, -ite, part-, chem-, -ic, -ous, -ure, trem, poti-, etc.
Step 2b: Now you have (1) a list of selected words and (2) a list of morphemes found in the words. As a class or individually, list one or more words that contain the same morpheme. Truthfully, it’s not always easy, so you may wish to use this word finder from time to time. It gives you the option to search for words using “starts with,” “ends with,” and “contains.”
Here are a few examples using our lists of words and morphemes:
1. (thermal / THERM-): thermometer, hypothermia, thermostat
2. (temperature / TEMPER-): temperamental, temper
3. (lukewarm / WARM): warmest, warming, heartwarming, legwarmer
4. (kinetic / -IC ): enthusiastic, automatic, problematic
5. (visualizing / VIS-): visor, advisor, visible
6. (diameter / DIA-): diagnosis, diabolical, diabetes
7. (meteorite / -ITE): graphite, definite, polite
8. (atmosphere / SPHERE): spherical, hemisphere, stratosphere
9. (particle / PART): partition, department, partial
10. (evidence /-ENCE): coincidence, independence, absence
11. (tremendous / -OUS): hazardous, repetitious, numerous
Step 3: Further Analysis and Research
I do these exercises quickly and consistently across the curriculum. My goal is to keep my students’ Reticular Activating System (RAS) for words activated. To be clear, things get messy fast, and the concepts frequently exceed our knowledge of words. Sometimes I clear up this confusion, and sometimes I don’t. Once again, I keep things quick and consistent! Using our words from above, here is how it looks when I clear up confusion:
» The teacher says, “Students, the suffix is not –dence. It’s –ence, a noun suffix indicating the state, quality, or condition. Other words with –ence are difference, patience, competence, and benevolence—none of which are -dence. By the way, although incense sounds like it has the suffix –ence, it doesn’t. Notice the (s) in incense. Incense is related to incendiary, which is related to fire. And although commence has the noun suffix –ence, it is a verb, not a noun. What’s going on with that?”
» The teacher says, “Students, you were right in that the word evidence has the suffix –ence. But notice how evidence breaks up into syllables: ev/i/dence. When looking at the syllables, it’s a little difficult to see the suffix –ence. However, it’s very challenging to see the Latin root: vid (see). With the word evidence, the syllables make it difficult to see the morphemes (roots, prefixes, and suffixes). By the way, vid and vis (in visualizing – also in our list of words) come from the same Latin verb, videre (to see).
» The teacher says, “Students, you may remember that we thought the po- in potential was possibly a prefix related to the po- in police. Well, I did a little research and discovered that the po- in potential comes from the Latin root poti (powerful; lord). The po- in police comes from the Latin root poli (city). POTI and POLI—there is a difference!”
» The teacher says, “Students, we all know what it means to be tremendous because everyone in this class is tremendous! Here is the word tremendous broken into syllables: tre/men/dous. Once again, the syllables make it difficult to see the morphemes (roots, prefixes, and suffixes). I was surprised to find that the main root of tremendous is trem- , which comes from the Latin verb tremere (to tremble). In short, when something is tremendous, it’s trembling good. It’s so good that it makes one tremble! Who would like to eat a piece of truly tremendous chocolate cake? It’s so good that it will make you tremble!”
We can’t teach our students the history and meaning of every word and word part, but we can teach our students that every word and word part has a history and a meaning. If you have the internet handy, you can quickly clear up areas of confusion using the resources I’ve linked to.
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Is It a Prefix, Suffix, or Root? Does it Matter?
I came across one model that teaches students that prefixes and suffixes are a type of root. I don’t teach my students that model because my students need to learn about prefixes and suffixes, and I don’t want to confuse them. I assume that the model’s goal is to make the point that prefixes, suffixes, and roots are all morphemes, which is what I teach.
However, with advanced academic vocabulary, scientific vocabulary, medical vocabulary, and technical vocabulary, it can be an ineffective use of time to overly distinguish between prefixes, suffixes, and roots. Our goal should be to get students to look at words and think about words. Our goal should be to help our students understand that big words are composed of parts (morphemes) that contribute meaning to the word.
It can be a fun and exciting exercise to analyze medical and scientific terminology to add perspective to what students typically learn about prefixes, suffixes, and roots. Here are a few exciting and relatively common words.
| anterior | epidermis | dermatologist |
| epicenter | mesothelioma | mononucleosis |
| pseudoephedrine | hematophagy | pathological |
| carcinogenic | bronchitis | appendectomy |
| hypoglycemic | diabetic neuropathy | microorganism |
| polymyositis | osteoporosis | circumnavigate |
| subdural hematoma | psychosomatic | arteriosclerosis |
| prenatal / postnatal | schizophrenia | hypertension |
| lymphoma | methylcobalamin | hyperthyroidism |
| mitochondria | asymptomatic | atypical |
| somatic | subcutaneous | percutaneous |
| electrocardiogram (EKG or ECG) | electroencephalogram (EEG) | hemochromatosis |
| magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) | percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) | cervical vertebrae |
Selecting Vocabulary Words to Teach Across the Curriculum
We all have amazing words to analyze and teach in front of us all day long! So, which words should you teach? Which words should you spend time on? To be honest, I’ve taught classes that were so far behind… I wouldn’t even want to estimate the percentage of words they didn’t understand.
Point being: Teachers need to use good judgment and use their time wisely. Be sure to read How to Improve Your Students’ Vocabulary for more on selecting vocabulary words. Also, in 35 Strategies for Developing Content Area Vocabulary (2009), Spencer and Guillaume succinctly list these six methods for “Selecting Target Terms for Vocabulary Development.”
1. Select the terms that students don’t know.
2. Select the terms that are important for conceptual understanding.
3. Select the terms that are used repeatedly.
4. Select terms that may be difficult for students.
5. Select terms that are likely to foster students’ ability to learn other words.
6. Consider differentiating word selections.
I also encourage all teachers to keep an eye out for teachable moments. For example, you may be reading a paragraph with your students and notice that two words (unbelievable and incredible) are related in meaning. You may see that they both have prefixes (un- and in-) that mean NOT. Why not pose a challenge to your students? Using a dramatic voice and body language, ask them, “Which two words in this paragraph mean something similar to SHOCKING?”
Sometimes teaching vocabulary words and vocabulary skills across the curriculum is just this easy. Be sure to point out that both un- and in- mean NOT. It takes just a second more.
