Reading: Vocabulary

Sites That Matter

If you want to learn more about teaching vocabulary in the content areas, choose from the links below.

• General Information on Content Reading Vocabulary
• Lesson Plans on Content Reading Vocabulary 

General Information on Content Reading Vocabulary

Strategies Related to Vocabulary
This site includes a number of strategies related to learning vocabulary, such as a general approach to unfamiliar vocabulary words, predictions based on the context, word elements, and do's and don'ts of teaching vocabulary (Scroll down for vocabulary section).
www.englishcompanion.com/room82/readexpository.html

Vocabulary teaching methods: International Reading Association National Panel Reading Report
This is a report from the International Reading Association on the latest findings in best strategies for teaching vocabulary. Some of strategies included are: practicing to increase capacity, association, keyword method, pre-teaching of vocabulary, and context method.
www.reading.org/downloads/resources/nrp_summary.pdf

Teaching Vocabulary to Adolescents to Improve Comprehension
This is an overview article on one approach to teaching vocabulary that includes focusing on vocabulary learning, moving from isolation to context, and selecting words for instruction.
www.readingonline.org/articles/art_index.asp?
HREF=/articles/curtis/index.html

THE PRACTICE: Vocabulary Development
This site provides an overview of vocabulary development in content areas. It includes links to other sites.
knowledgeloom.org/practice_basedoc.jsp?
t=1&bpid=1207&aspect
=1&location=2&parentid=1197&bpinterid=1197
&spotlightid=1174&testflag=yes

The Clarifying Routine: Elaborating Vocabulary Instruction
This is a research-based article on strategies useful for teaching vocabulary. It includes teaching new terms in the context of a meaningful subject matter lesson, guidelines for selecting vocabulary to be learned, facilitating paraphrasing of the definitions of new terms, making background knowledge connections to the new terms, identifying examples/applications as well as non-examples/non-applications, and creating multiple formats that students can use to elaborate on the meaning of new terms.
www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/
teaching_techniques/ellis_clarifying.html

Lesson Plans on Content Reading Vocabulary

Secondary Content Teacher Reading Strategies
This section contains a number of vocabulary lessons and activities, including decoding multi-syllabic words, prefixes/suffixes, content area vocabulary, feature analysis map, using context clues, and unknown words in context.
www.ops.org/reading/secondarystrat1.htm

This page includes activities for teaching vocabulary in content areas, such as identifying key vocabulary and concepts in the reading selection, List-Group-Label, creating "Possible Sentences," and identifying the pattern of exposition.
coe.sdsu.edu/people/jmora/Pages/ContentStudyGds.htm

Just Read Now: Vocabulary Strategies
This page includes 12 different vocabulary strategies for the middle school.
www.justreadnow.com/strategies/vocabulary.htm

Vocabulary Builders Page
This page provides worksheets and activities for developing content area vocabulary. It includes a think-aloud strategy, context clues, compound words, prefixes, suffixes, etc.
www.manatee.k12.fl.us/sites/
elementary/palmasola/vocabbuild2.htm

Teaching Vocabulary in the Content Areas
This page contains specific tips for teaching content reading vocabulary words, prefixes, suffixes, etc.
www.pgcps.pg.k12.md.us/%7Eelc/readingacross2.html

Tools for Teaching Vocabulary

Vocabulary Word Maps
This is a download of a visualizing map for teaching vocabulary.
curry.edschool.virginia.edu/
go/readquest/strat/wordmap.html

Visual Thesaurus
This virtual thesaurus includes an interactive map showing the meaning of your word.
www.visualthesaurus.com/desktop/index.jsp

Voycabulary
VoyCabulary™ makes the words on any web page into links so that you can look them up with just a click!
www.voycabulary.com/