Vocabulary Flashcards
Idioms
Common phrases or expressions with a figurative meaning
Activities for facilitating oral language:
Ask open-ended questions to promote whole class and small group discussion
“think-pair-share”
Have students name, describe, and categorize various objects and concepts.
Have students retell stories.
Use show-and-tell to build oral language skills
Scaffolding students oral language development
A sentence stem or sentence frame provides a portion of the sentence for students and allows them to fill in the rest.
Single-word prompts are also useful in developing students’ oral language for specific purposes. (ex. First, next, then)
Modeling the effective use of oral language
Tier 1: Basic Vocabulary
Common words that are already familiar to students when they enter school. These words do not need to be taught in a classroom setting
Tier 2: High Frequency Academic Words
Words that students will encounter frequently in multiple content areas. Many of these are process words that commonly appear in assessments.
Tier 3: Low-Frequency, Domain-Specific Words:
Academic words that are specific to a particular content area or discipline. These are words that would appear in a subject-specific textbook or in the glossary of an informational text.
4 Categories of Vocabulary
Speaking, listening, writing, and reading vocabulary
Most vocabulary is learned indirectly and can be enhanced in the following ways:
Give students many opportunities to participate in oral language through hearing and conversing with others, especially adults.
Provide times for reading aloud to students regardless of the age or grade.
Allow various opportunities for students to read on their own.
Strategies that can enhance students direct vocabulary development:
Teach new/unfamiliar vocabulary from a text before having students read the text. Focus on words that support the big ideas in the text.
Provide ways to actively engage students with new vocabulary. Might include a graphic organizer such as a simple concept map or the Frayer Model
Add new vocabulary to a student-developed dictionary or journal.
Use the new words in various contexts
Provide a word wall with words and images
Strategies for promoting word consciousness:
word games
studying and discussing word origins, also known as etymology
analyzing morphology
facilitating student word investigation by providing direct instruction on and opportunities to practice researching etymologies, analyzing morphology, discovering different usages, etc.
facilitating student collection of interesting words in a word log or other format
providing students opportunities to share interesting words
Paralanguage
Optional vocal effects that accompany or modify meaning of a word. Includes intonation, pitch, and volume
Demonstrative pronouns
this, that, these, those
Transition (or transitional) words
Essential for communicating meaning through writing. Proper use of transitions in an essay helps the reader move from point to point in an organized research paper or through the stages of a narrative.
Dialogue tag
Phrases that are used to break up, precede or follow written dialogue to convey which character is speaking. (ex. he said, she exclaimed, or they asked)
