Vocabulary Strategies It is vital that teachers give students the tools for acquiring their own rich vocabulary.
Students will learn many words when they encounter them in meaningful contexts, but other words must be directly taught . Repeated meaningful encounters with words in read-alouds, in conversation, in personal reading, in discussion, or in media viewing can lead students to build vocabulary over time. Teachers should model effective word learning strategies for students. Think Aloud Think Aloud is a powerful tool for teachers because it gives them a look at the thinking that goes on in the brain of a learner. It can be an especially powerful tool for modeling word attack skills. When teachers read aloud to students they can expose their word learning strategies by stopping at words students might find hard or confusing. Vocabulary Self-Selection Strategy The Vocabulary Self-Selection Strategy (Haggard, 1986) is a small group activity for word learning. In this activity, students read a text selection and the teacher and each student is responsible for bringing two words to the attention of the group. Students are encouraged to choose words they have heard or seen in previous reading, but may not be able to define. PAVE Procedure The PAVE Procedure (Bannon, Fisher, Pozzi, & Wessel, 1990) was developed to encourage students to check the dictionary definition against the context in which the word appeared. It also helps students remember word meanings by associating the word with a visual image. PAVE stands for the four parts of the procedure - prediction, association, verification, and evaluation. Students should predict the meaning of the word based on the context clues, associate the word with a mental image, verify the word's meaning by consulting a dictionary, then evaluate the prediction they made. While this procedure seems time-consuming, students report that it helps them remember the words better List-Group-Label List-Group-Label (Taba, 1967) is a vocabulary strategy where students are asked to generate a list of words, group them according to their similarities, then label the group. This would be a great companion activity for AlphaBoxes. For example, if the teacher asked students to brainstorm a list of words they associate with danger, students might list words like run, enemy, shout, gun, snake, alarm, scream, spider, warn, scare, poison, cry,
siren, stranger, escape, fire, bear, and shelter. Students would group the words according to the categories they identify. Language Collection Sheet Student VOC Strategy This strategy targets specific content vocabulary by having students work to acquire a deeper meaning of a vocabulary word. Teachers list the key vocabulary for the topic or unit. From the list students identify one or two words that are unknown or unclear. Students then complete the Student VOC Strategy Sheet on their own. Teachers can use this as a classroom assessment for learning by observing which words students select. Clarifications of word meanings can be done with individual students or with small groups. Word Banks Word Banks are places where students can keep a list of words they have learned so that they can refer to them as needed. Word Banks can be kept in journals or placed on index cards to be used as flash cards. The index cards can also be placed on rings for organizational purposes. Students should be expected to use the words in their writing and their speaking.