Students need a wide vocabulary to succeed in school. Although extensive independent reading from a young age is one of the best ways to build a wide vocabulary, by the time students reach my 10th grade English class, many of them haven't built the habit of reading widely (or beyond what's assigned). Students need to develop a flexible and varied vocabulary that includes precise terms for both the world around them and the work of the content area in the classroom, and they need to develop skills to figure out new words when they come across them. In my classroom, I use a combination of implicit and explicit instruction methods, which can be both playful and rigorous, to help my students build lasting vocabulary connections.
Implicit Instruction
My son has never been a book lover. He's much more of a pragmatic, read-to-get-the-information-I-need kind of guy. For kids like him, conversations with people with varied vocabularies will boost his word power more than reading. That's one reason I never spoke to my kids in baby talk. Rather, I grew their budding vocabularies by using adult words supplemented with smaller, explanatory words. This resulted in small humans with outsized vocabularies, but it stood them in good stead when they got to school.
In my high school English classroom, I do the same thing. I use difficult words and then restate the idea with more common words. Students notice, and they'll often ask about the difficult words and use them later. We put academic words on a large sheet of fadeless paper hanging on the wall. Students add words, make connections, write poetry, and ask each other questions. We become a community of learners that talks about academic language. This culture works by encouraging students to ask about unfamiliar words. One of the ways I model this is by always answering student questions about vocabulary, even if it interrupts a reading or instruction.
Explicit Instruction
When planning a unit, I consider the texts and post an academic word bank for the literary devices that the texts will display. I ask the students to find examples of these devices, use them in discussion, and use the techniques in their writing. In each unit, we learn 10 or so literary devices, and I make sure that they are related by concept. For example, when we are studying fiction, I encourage students to discuss plot, characterization, and narrative devices using words such as conflict, rising action, denouement, characterization, flashback, and allusion. Giving students an academic vocabulary gives them the "tools of the trade" for discussion and analysis.
I also find ways to relate vocabulary words from the text to the academic vocabulary. If we're learning characterization, we'll consider motivation, narration, imagery, diction, dialogue, and point of view, and I'll look over the text for new or difficult words that connect to these terms. In one activity, I put all the words on paper strips and put the strips in an envelope. Students work together to group the words in different ways to make connections. For example, if given the words pallor and characterization, students might point out that pallor could show fear or stress in a character. By listening to the reasoning behind their choices, I can see how well they are learning the words and making connections.
In addition, I have students use examples of the academic vocabulary in their writing. When students review each other's writing, I ask them to look for and analyze the academic vocabulary in use. In their comments, they have to justify their analysis and explain their thinking, which includes defining the term to show their understanding.
Language study is also important, so my toolkit includes explicit instruction in word roots. Students have a choice of several different methods, both online and on paper, to study these roots. I ask them to work with the words in a variety of ways, including defining, finding the etymology, listing related words, making word pictures, and finding or creating an image that connects to a word's root. Students have regular word root tests. They are allowed to retake these tests until they demonstrate mastery of the roots. Working with the parts of language helps them decipher new words they come across, and having the chance to work toward mastery gives them both confidence and motivation to find out which way to study words works best for them.
It is impossible to teach explicitly all the words a student needs to learn. But by helping students make connections, asking them to look at words in different ways, and connecting academic vocabulary to the traditional vocabulary in texts, teachers can encourage students' curiosity about words and support them in building lifelong approaches to learning new words. Through a combination of play and rigorous word study, my students have successfully improved their vocabularies.