Vocabulary Instructional Strategies

• Before reading a new story to the class, take a picture walk. Briefly flip through the pages and talk about what you see on some of the pages. This will help students get ready for potential new vocabulary and will stimulate their background knowledge.
• Have a word wall and demonstrate its use when writing in front of the class.
  
  • Word wall should have high frequency words. It is a great way for students to notice similarities in words, increases their spelling skills and provides support as well as increasing their vocabulary.
    
• Pre teach more difficult words. Before reading a story, pick out a few difficult words that students may not know and teach them the meaning of the words before reading the story. Have students raise their hands when you get to one of the words in the story.
  
  • Similarly, instead of pre teaching words, have several new words written on the board. Students will have to be detectives to find the words in the book, and then use context clues to discover their meanings. Like the pre teach method, you can have students raise their hand when they hear or read the new word.   

References

• Cunningham, P. M., & Allington, R. L. (2016). Classrooms that work: They can all read and write. Pearson.
  
• Vocabulary. Reading Rockets. (2020, October 16). Retrieved July 30, 2022, from https://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/reading-basics/vocabulary​