Vocabulary Tools
Recent research on vocabulary shows that students with delays in language acquisition and oral vocabulary experience significant difficulty in comprehending what they read. It is extremely important that teachers/parents develop students’ language skills, especially vocabulary.
Good vocabulary instruction emphasizes useful words (words that students see frequently), important words (key words that help students understand the text), and difficult words (idiomatic words, words with more than one meaning, etc.). In providing vocabulary instruction teachers/parents can help students by:
· Activating their prior knowledge
· Defining words in multiple contexts
· Helping them see context clues
· Helping them understand the structure of words, e.g., prefixes, roots, and suffixes
· Teaching them how to use a dictionary and showing them the range of information it provides
· Encouraging deep processing. Students need to integrate new words into their working vocabularies.
· Giving them multiple exposures
· Focusing on a small number of important words. Ideally, the words should be related so that the depth of concept development can be increased.
Vocabulary instruction can be supported by using any of the following:
1) Content Word Wall
2) Vocabulary Bingo
3) Semantic Mapping
4) Word Map
5) Word of the Day
6) Word Sorts
The above vocabulary aids will enhance the student’s understanding of key words by giving them opportunities to organize and visualize the definitions of terms both in and out of context.
Click on the icons to download the following comprehension tools.
vocab. word map.pdf
vocab. concept map.pdf
Vocabulary Bingo.doc
semantic map.pdf
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