Vocabulary Development
Strategies for building students' word knowledge — essential for reading comprehension across all subjects.
Types of Vocabulary Knowledge
Receptive vocabulary — words a person understands when heard or read.
Productive vocabulary — words a person uses in speaking or writing.
Tier 1 — basic, everyday words (run, house, happy).
Tier 2 — high-utility academic words that appear across subjects (analyze, contrast, significant). These are the primary targets for instruction.
Tier 3 — domain-specific technical words (photosynthesis, denominator, legislature).
Research-Based Strategies
Explicit instruction — teach 5–10 Tier 2 words per week with student-friendly definitions, examples, and non-examples.
Context clues — teach students to use surrounding text to infer meaning.
Morphemic analysis — teach prefixes, suffixes, and roots to unlock thousands of related words.
Wide reading — students who read more encounter more words in context. Independent reading is the single largest source of vocabulary growth after grade 3.
Multiple exposures — students need 10–15 encounters with a word in varied contexts before it becomes part of their productive vocabulary.