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January 18th is celebrated as Thesaurus Day to honor the birthday of the author of the first thesaurus, Peter Mark Roget. Get into the spirit by reading our two-part interview with Roget biographer Joshua Kendall here and here. Also check out an ode to the thesaurus penned by Franklin P. Adams here and Johnny Carson's hilarious "Funeral for a Thesaurus Editor" sketch here.

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Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus - An online thesaurus and dictionary of over 145,000 words that you explore using an interactive map.

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An online thesaurus and dictionary of over 145,000 words that you explore using an interactive map. It's a tool for people who think visually. The most fun you've ever had with words. The Visual Thesaurus was built using Thinkmap, a data visualization technology.

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Reading Rockets

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Top 10 Resources on Vocabulary | Reading Rockets

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Semantic Mapping - Teach with Tech

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As students advance to upper elementary grades, there is a shift from "learning to read" to "reading to learn", particularly with regard to content-area reading in history, social studies, and science. Students are expected to read primary and...

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Part of preparing students to become college and career ready involves helping them become adept at integrating and evaluating information in a variety of different media formats. To help students become comfortable with multimedia, it is useful to...

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Semantic Mapping - Teach with Tech | Power Up What Works

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Discover Lessons in Action: Watch Our Quick View Technology Videos: As students advance to upper elementary grades, there is a shift from "learning to read" to "reading to learn", particularly with regard to content-area reading in history, social studies, and science. Students are expected to read primary and...

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Technology tools and resources to support using semantic mapping with students. 

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A Semantic Feature Analysis improves students' comprehension, vocabulary, and content retention. This strategy helps students to examine related features or concepts and make distinctions among them. By analyzing the completed matrix, students are able to visualize connections, make predictions, and better understand important concepts.

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Using the Total Physical Response method to teach vocabulary. The TPR strategy is very useful, especially when teaching English Language Learners.

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TIPS for Educators of ELLs in Grades 4-12: Teaching Vocabulary

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TIPS for Educators of ELLs in Grades 4-12: Teaching Vocabulary

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Colorín Colorado

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Teaching vocabulary to English language learners (ELLs) is an important part of students' language development, but making the most of vocabulary instruction requires careful planning. Which words will be most useful in a new lesson and other settings? What kinds of practice can educators offer so that students master the meanings of new words rather than simply memorizing them? This resource section provides numerous research-based ideas from veteran educators as well as vocabulary resources for the classroom.

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Teaching vocabulary to English language learners (ELLs) is an important part of students' language development, but making the most of vocabulary instruction requires careful planning. Which words will be most useful in a new lesson and other settings? What kinds of practice can educators offer so that students master the meanings of new words rather than simply memorizing them?

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Balanced Lit Diet

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BALANCEDLITERACYDIET :: Vocabulary :: Balanced Literacy Diet

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Students need to develop both their speaking and listening vocabulary. The first refers to those words a student can use when speaking and the latter refers to the spoken words that a student can understand. Each type of vocabulary supports literacy development, as well as learning in other subject areas.

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Reading Rockets

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Oral vocabulary refers to words that we use in speaking or comprehend in listening. Reading vocabulary refers to words we comprehend or use in print. In the Simple View of Reading, which describes reading as having two basic components - word recognition and comprehension - vocabulary falls under language comprehension.

Vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read. Beginning readers must use the words they hear orally to make sense of the words they see in print.

Consider, for example, what happens when a beginning reader comes to the word dig in a book. As she begins to figure out the sounds represented by the letters d, i, and g, the reader recognizes that the sounds make up a very familiar word that she has heard and said many times. It is harder for a beginning reader to figure out words that are not already part of her speaking (oral) vocabulary.

Furthermore, as children advance to reading longer, more complex types of words, many English words have more than one plausible phonetic pronunciation. For example, canopy could be cuh-NOP-ee instead of CAN-up-ee; timid could be pronounced with a long i in the first syllable (like time - id) instead of with a short i. If children already have these words in their oral vocabularies, it will be easier for them to read the words correctly.

Vocabulary is also very important to reading comprehension. Readers cannot understand what they are reading without knowing what most of the words mean. As children learn to read more advanced texts, they must learn the meaning of new words that are not part of their oral vocabulary.

There are four types of vocabulary:

Listening vocabulary: the words we need to know to understand what we hear

Speaking vocabulary: the words we use when we speak

Reading vocabulary: the words we need to know to understand what we read

Writing vocabulary: the words we use in writing

In assessment of vocabulary in beginning or struggling readers, use of an oral measure (listening and/or speaking vocabulary) is very important. A written measure of vocabulary will confound vocabulary knowledge with reading skills.

For instance, if a poor decoder obtains a low score on a vocabulary measure that requires reading, it will be difficult to know whether the low score actually reflects vocabulary limitations or merely the fact that the child could not decode the words on the test.
Adapted from: Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read, Kindergarten Through Grade 3, a publication of The Partnership for Reading.

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Oral vocabulary refers to words that we use in speaking or comprehend in listening. Reading vocabulary refers to words we comprehend or use in print. In the Simple View of Reading, which describes reading as having two basic components - word recognition and comprehension - vocabulary falls under language comprehension.