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Link to Digital Tools and Apps for Vocabulary

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Link to Digital Tools and Apps for Vocabulary

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The Writing Journey for one Secondary School

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The Writing Journey for one Secondary School

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Bringing Cohesiveness to Writing Classes  - MS

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Vocabulary Alphaboxes: 14 Strategies to Use Before, During, and After Reading

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Vocabulary Alphaboxes: 14 Strategies to Use Before, During, and After Reading

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Day 8: 14 Simple Strategies for Using & Extending Alphaboxes

Alphaboxes, as created by Linda Hoyt, is a strategy which encourages student to interact with text. In addition, alphaboxes helps student activate prior knowledge, build vocabulary, and increase comprehension.

Using the alphaboxes graphic organizer helps students make connections to new information before, during and after reading. Using and extending the strategy in a variety of ways moves students beyond simple recall of factual information to going beyond the information presented in the text.

Alphaboxes is an ideal strategy for students to work collaboratively with a partner or small group to engage with informational text. With modeling, alphaboxes can be used in K-12 classrooms in a variety of ways. The Common Core State Standards encourage a shift toward using more informational text with students. Even first grade students can use alphaboxes in a small group as a follow-up activity with informational storybooks.
The following strategies provide a variety of ideas for using and extending alphaboxes to encourage and support interaction, conversation, and connections to text.
14 Simple Strategies for Using & Extending Alphaboxes Before, During, and After Reading

Key Academic Vocabulary: Use alphaboxes as a way to introduce students to key academic vocabulary before reading. Briefly discuss the meaning of each term. Students can record vocabulary terms in appropriate boxes as a guide for reading the text.

Activate Prior Knowledge: After introducing the topic/concept to student, elicit a brief discussion. Individually or working with a partner, have students record terms they associate with the topic. Follow with a brief class discussion before reading the text.

Predict Vocabulary: When conducting a picture walk with young readers, have students predict vocabulary the author may use within the book. After reading, students can compare the vocabulary the author chose to use with their predictions. With a bit of modification, older students can benefit from this activity as well.

Focus on Specific Vocabulary: Depending on the text type and age of students, you can change the focus of the alphabox activity. For example, you could direct students to select vocabulary that shows how characters feel. Or, select vocabulary that help the reader picture the characters, setting, or action taking place.

During Reading

Engage with Text: As students read, each time they come upon a term that students identified before reading, note the page number and definition of each term.

Record Key Terms: Students add key terms to the Alphaboxes while reading a text, watching a video, or listening to a recording.

Engage with Peers: Following reading or listening, students come together in pairs, small groups, or as a class to discuss specific terms added to the graphic organizer and any words they now think are irrelevant and should be removed. The key is that students can verbalize to a partner or the group why they included specific terms and why they think they're important to understanding the content.

Generate Questions: Based on the key vocabulary, students generate questions about the text and terms associated with the content.

Revisit the Text: Following a read aloud, young readers revisit the text with a small group of students or as a class following the teacher's guidance. Students discuss the text and suggest key terms which the teacher records on a large alphabox chart.

Connect Vocabulary to a Word Wall: Create a word wall featuring vocabulary from read alouds or a content unit. Have students decide which words should be included on the word wall - you can always add your vote for a term that you know is important. Read more tips for effective word walls here and here.

Write about the Text: Following reading and discussion, students can select words from their personal or class alphabox chart to write about the text. Depending on the age of students, it could take the form of shared writing, interactive writing, paired or independent writing. The writing could take many forms - an extension piece, summarizing the text, a letter to a character or the author, etc.

Add Nonlinguistics: Integrate nonlinguistic representations with key vocabulary. Students can select vocabulary and make or find visuals to accompany terms. They can also act out key vocabulary. Non-linguistic representations, integral in Marzano's 6-step vocabulary process, are key to learning new words.

Integrate Digital Tools to Support Vocabulary Review: The key to learning vocabulary is through multiple exposures to new words. Using digital tools to support practice is easier than ever. Among the 21 digital tools that I've reviewed, you'll find one or more to support your goals.

Play Games to Review Vocabulary: Creating an alphabox chart with key vocabulary is simply not enough for students to "own" their understanding of the terms. Playing interactive games to review terms is a great way for students to hear the words in a new context. The final step of Marzano's 6-step vocabulary process emphasizes the importance of playing games and other review activities. Here's a two review activities to get you started: Save the Last Word for Me & Concept Circles

To download the alphabox graphic organizer, click on the tag below. Have you found these posts supporting your efforts? Then subscribe by email or RSS feed and have new posts delivered regularly to your Inbox!
Source: Hoyt, Linda. 1999. Revisit, Reflect, Retell: Strategies for Improving Reading Comprehension (Heinemann)

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Alphaboxes: 14 Strategies to Use Before, During, & After Reading {12 Days of Literacy} l Dr. Kimberly's Literacy Blog

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Day 8: 14 Simple Strategies for Using & Extending Alphaboxes Alphaboxes, as created by Linda Hoyt, is a strategy which encourages student to interact with text. In addition, alphaboxes helps student activate prior knowledge, build vocabulary, and increase comprehension. Using the alphaboxes graphic organizer helps students make connections to new information before, during and after ...

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Secondary: Effective Vocabulary Practices & 10 Ways We Fake It

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Effective Vocabulary Practices and 10 Ways We Fake It

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5 Simple Strategies to Support Struggling Readers

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5 Simple Strategies to Support Struggling Readers

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In the age of the Common Core, we frequently hear that every teacher is a reading teacher. In other words, all teachers are responsible for helping students reading and comprehend text. However, that's a lofty goal when, as a [insert content area here] teacher, you may not know much about reading other than you can do it and some (or many) of your students cannot.

I first titled this post with the following title: Struggling Readers Need to be Supported by ALL Teachers, Not just Reading Teachers. We all have to get better at it. Our classrooms are filled with diverse students and, in some districts, English Learners don't receive enough support.

In this post, I'll share a few relatively painless ways to support struggling readers at the secondary level.
5 Strategies for Supporting Struggling Readers
1. Provide opportunities to access text in a variety of ways.
Keep in mind, struggling readers can't comprehend text they can't read. It's that's simple. If they can't read it, they can't comprehend it. So, you'll need to provide opportunities for students to access text in a variety of ways.

First, check out the readability level of the specific text/s from which students read. (For printed text, this YouTube video will help. And, for websites, use this site to plug in the site.) Readability, simply put, is the difficulty level of the text. Given factors such as complex sentences and word length (vocabulary), you can get a rough idea of how difficult the text is. Keep in mind, readability formulas do a rather poor job at factoring in the theme or concept level. So, sometimes you can get an okay level for a text, but the theme or subject matter makes the text far more difficult to comprehend.

So, let's say your text has a high readability level. An easy way to provide more accessible texts is to find similar material on the web. I suggest bookmarking several pages on various websites that have the same content only at an easier-to-comprehend level. This can feel overwhelming, of course. If you teach in a team, have one team member take on this task for each unit and that way you can share the responsibility.
2. Read Aloud.
Read aloud sections that cover essential, key concepts. Reading aloud is a good alternative because students can typically comprehend at higher levels than they read. And, follow reading by having students discuss the key vocabulary and concepts in the texts. I would choose to have students follow along so that they can connect the text with oral reading.

Huge word of caution: don't randomly choose student to read aloud. Don't do it. Anxiety inducing for many students and just plain bad practice. (Students need to read text silently before reading orally in order to be fluent.)
3. Purposefully Teach Kids to Reread.
Kids who struggle with reading difficult text often shut down when they don't easily understand the text. And, let's face it, content area texts are difficult for many students to easily understand. In other words, it takes work. So, teach kids how to purposefully reread text. Kylene Beers, author of When Kids Can't Read - What Teachers Can Do, suggests the following strategy.

Choose a short passage you think will be just a bit difficult for many of your students. Now have your students reread that short piece of text 3 times. Each time they read, have students rate their understanding on a scale of 1-5. What students typically see is that each time they reread the passage, they're number goes up. The conversation that you want to have with kids focuses on the question "why was the passage easier to read as you re-read the passage?" For example, some students may notice that they understood the sequence of information better, others may say they slowed down and could understand it more clearly, still others may simply say they could visualize the information better as they reread. The important idea here is that you are teaching students that rereading, as a strategy, is one way to make sense of difficult text.

4. Build on Prior Knowledge.

I realize that we're in the age of more rigorous standards which emphasize close reading; however, at the recent IRA 2014 conference P. David Pearson made a statement that went something like this. He asserted, "Please don't throw the background knowledge baby out with the Common Core bathwater." In addition to making me chuckle, it made me think about the importance of building background knowledge for struggling readers. We know that if students aren't familiar with the content or topic, they'll have more difficulty comprehending a given text.

One simple way to build background knowledge is to develop and use Anticipation guides. Anticipation guides help students intentionally think about the themes or big ideas before reading the text. They're not graded, of course, but help guide students while they read and make sense of the text.

You can find many directions about how to construct them here and here. And, one more example of an anticipation guide that I developed for the book Miss Rumphius.

Of course, it goes without saying that vocabulary or word knowledge is critically important to comprehension too. I've written many posts about effective vocabulary instruction and am currently writing a practical book (to be published by Solution Tree) about the topic. In terms of aiding comprehension, research shows that pre-teaching critical vocabulary improves comprehension. I've listed a few posts below that expand on the importance of vocabulary.
5. Promote and Support Independent Reading.
Kids who don't read well often don't read frequently. There are many reasons students don't read enough, of course. Maybe these students were forced to read numerous class novels that were too hard or perhaps didn't capture their interest. Maybe they grew up in a home with few books and materials for reading and literacy was not modeled. Or, perhaps when selecting books in the school library, they were pigeonholed into choosing books from one or two shelves at their Lexile level.

We may not know the exact reason that some (a lot) of secondary students don't read frequently, but we do know that the number one way to build stronger, more capable readers is for students to often read independently. In this space, I'll briefly address the two terms promote and support:

Promote. You can promote reading in many ways both directly and indirectly. For example, talk about what you're reading (you are reading, right?). And, have other students "booktalk" books they're reading. Booktalks are a simple and easy way for kids to become aware of high interest books their peers are reading. In addition to book talks, stay aware of young adult (YA) literature through your school librarian. Post book jackets and other reading materials around your classroom.

Support. Support student reading and reading choice with a classroom library. While it's not impossible, it is difficult to support reading without the resources in the classroom for students to read. A high-quality classroom library supports independent reading by providing access to a wide variety of books and other reading materials. It takes time to build a classroom library; however, there are several budget-friendly ways to build a diverse collection of books that supports student's independent reading. In short, kids who are surrounded by books read more. It's really that simple (and maybe that difficult, too).

Struggling readers sit in our classrooms and will continue to struggle without our support. While there are many more ways to provide support, these five strategies provide a good place to begin.
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5 Simple Strategies to Support Struggling Readers at the Secondary Level {5 Steps Series} l Dr. Kimberly's Literacy Blog

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In the age of the Common Core, we frequently hear that every teacher is a reading teacher. In other words, all teachers are responsible for helping students reading and comprehend text. However, that's a lofty goal when, as a [insert content area here] teacher, you may not know much about reading other than you can ...

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Teaching vocabulary and extending word learning is one of the most important activities we do with our students. Word walls, an essential part of a literacy-rich classroom, provide a rich resource of Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 vocabulary for students.

Word walls can be a great teaching and learning tool. More than just a display of words, word walls should be integrated into instruction. Used effectively, they will support and extend word learning for students of all ages.
These five simple steps will show you how to create rockin' word walls that support student learning, comprehension, and achievement.
It's tempting to have your classroom look perfect for back-to-school night. But, resist the temptation to carefully print, laminate, and display your fabulous word wall. Instead, tell parents that your room will be peppered with print as the year progresses.

Then, create all of your word walls (you can't have just one!) with your students. As the year progresses, select your words from content units, high frequency words, "must-know" words, and more! Focus most of your word walls on Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary words; however, if you have many English language learners in your school, you'll want words walls that include everyday words (Tier 1) as well.

As you develop your words walls, print the words in a large, simple font with a wide-tip black marker. Resist the urge to laminate words. You want students to use and refer to the word walls from across the room; too often laminated vocabulary cards glare from fluorescent lights. Also, words need only be displayed in alphabetical order for primary students. For older students, simply group words in a way that makes sense for the content.

Have fun creating word walls with your students. The possibilities are endless.

Classroom space is limited in many schools. If you're short on wall space to display word walls, get creative. Just as there is no one right way to create a word wall, there is no one right way to display a word wall either.
Word walls come in all shapes and sizes. Here's a few ideas.

Portable Word Walls: Think about having separate areas or creating "portable" word walls for categorizes or groups of words.

Cupboard Doors: No wall space? Use cupboard doors to display words. They're not as wide, but work quite well.

Ceiling Tiles: I've seen a few teachers use paper clips and hang words from ceiling tiles. It's not only creative, but it works!

Poster Frames: Here's a novel idea. Use a simple poster frame (sold at Hobby Lobby or Michael's) and display words within the frame. Easy to change-up, too!

Pocket Chart: Use a pocket chart to create a simple and easily changeable word wall.

Tall Cabinet or File Cabinet: Both of these can be a great, useable space to display words of all types. Just stick a small magnet on the back of each words and, voila(!), you have a word wall.

Anchor Charts: Create portable word walls on anchor charts. You can easily create them for each unit or content theme. Then store them on three rings so that students can refer to them.

It's easy to create a word wall in September and, over time, forget about it until it's time to dismantle the classroom in May. Words walls can easily become part of the scenery, so to speak, instead of a useful literacy tool.

So, change them up! Too often, we're stuck thinking that all words walls are limited to displaying sight words in K-2 classrooms. As Janet Allen, author of Words, Words, Words advocates, word walls should be part of every K-12 classroom.

So, it may be time to rethink your word walls! I'll help you out with a few simple ideas.
Types of Word Walls

Phonic Patterns

Spelling, Word Family, and Rhyming Patterns

Content/Topical/Thematic Word Walls

Words We Know

Prefixes, Suffixes, and Root Words

Words from Read Alouds

Spanish/English Word Walls

Graffiti Word Walls (Words that students find interesting found in reading or listening.)

Frequently Misspelled Words

"Trash" Words (Words that students agree not to use ... e.g., walked, said, talked)

"Recycled" Words (Words to use instead of... e.g., garrulous instead of talkative)

Color-Coded Word Walls (e.g., color code verbs, nouns, and adjectives to help students find parts of speech easily)

Tier 2 Words

Hallway Word Walls (extend word learning into the school hallways - see example)

In addition to traditional word walls, digital word walls can support and enhance your word learning goals as well. Change it up by integrating digital word walls, too.

These 3 digital tools will get you started. Want more? Check out 21 Digital Tools to Support Vocabulary.
Digital Word Walls
Wallwisher is an online space to create a collaborative, digital word wall. Getting a leg up on the more traditional word wall, Wallwisher allows users to create sticky notes that can include text, images, links and videos. A great, collaborative tool and virtual classroom space to build online references and key vocabulary for content units.

ThingLink is a tool for making images interactive. To use, simply upload an image, identify hot spots on specific parts of the image, and add text or web links to the image. In the classroom, you could use ThingLink to launch a unit by introducing students to key vocabulary or students could design interactive images as they become more familiar with vocabulary.

TrackStar, a free online program, allows teachers to collect a series of websites and annotate them so that students can follow an online journey. With a little work, teachers can create a visual vocabulary field trip for students. TrackStar is a great way for students to experience multiple exposures to words in varied contexts which is a characteristic of effective vocabulary instruction.

Need a few more ideas? Top Tips for Word Walls, downloaded by thousands of educators, includes 26 ideas and 7 pictures from Garden City Elementary School to help get your creative juices flowing.

When observing classrooms that have word walls, I usually see an alphabetical display of words on cards. Nonlinguistic word walls are the exception, not the rule. As the saying goes, "a picture is worth a thousand words."

Encourage students to create images or find pictures and symbols to accompany each word. Pictographs and images go a long way toward cementing the word meaning with a visual image. The example (to the right) was created in an intermediate classroom at Garden City Elementary School (Indianapolis). Students created the word cards and quickly drew pictographs to accompany each word.

Representing words by using visuals and pictographs - the 3 rd step in Marzano's 6-Step Vocabulary Process - appears to be the step that has the most impact on student's mastery of new words.

It is easy for any word wall to become part of the classroom scenery and not be used as a teaching tool and learning resource. In order to avoid this, I've listed a few ideas to keep your word walls an integral part of instruction and a resource for students.
Review and Play Games

Refer to them: Simply refer to words on your word walls as you teach and have conversation across the school day. Depending on the age of your students, have students practice the spelling by air writing (primary students) and "writing" the word on their hand with a finger (intermediate students).

Review Words: Multiple exposures to new words is key to understanding the nuances of a word's meaning. Review words and continually use them in new and varied contexts. Have students use words verbally with a partner or in a small group.

Play Games - Elementary: There are many word wall activities for primary and intermediate students from ranging from Flashlight Fun to Word Sorts. I've compiled more than 20 word walls activities and games; you can access it in the Teacher Toolkit.

Save the Last Word for Me - Intermediate & Secondary: Secondary students need to review words, too. "Save the Last Word for Me" is a strategy that requires all students to participate as active speakers and listeners. Its' clearly defined structure is perfect for reviewing vocabulary and helping students transition to using new words. You can download the template in the Teacher Toolkit - Vocabulary.

Games - Intermediate & Secondary Students: Vocabulary Games for the Classroom, a professional resource by Robert Marzano, includes many game-like activities that reinforce words and help students play with words while adding to their understanding of new vocabulary.

Word Jar: Some teachers make Word Jars to keep tally of how frequently students use new vocabulary. Each time a student or the teacher correctly uses a word found on a Word Wall, that person adds an m&m or cotton ball to the jar. When the jar is full, the class gets a popcorn party, for example. The most important element, of course, is the practice of using new words in oral language.

Word walls in the classroom and hallways support and extend word learning for students. Create words walls with students, change them up frequently, and use them as a resource for students to build a strong and diverse vocabulary.
{5 Steps Series}
Word walls are part of the bigger picture for effective vocabulary instruction. You may also be interested in reading 5 Steps to Effective Vocabulary Instruction.
Have you found these posts supporting your efforts? Then subscribe by email or RSS feed and have new posts delivered regularly to your Inbox!
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{5 Steps Series} 5 Easy Steps to Rockin' Word Walls l Dr. Kimberly's Literacy Blog

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Teaching vocabulary and extending word learning is one of the most important activities we do with our students. Word walls, an essential part of a literacy-rich classroom, provide a rich resource of Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 vocabulary for students. Word walls can be a great teaching and learning tool.

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Teaching vocabulary can be tough - but you gotta' do it. Why? Because word learning is connected at the hip to teaching content at any level. And, we know that student achievement and learning is directly related word knowledge.

For those new to this blog, I write frequently about vocabulary here and in Blended Vocabulary, my recently published vocabulary book. If you're interested in strategies, the CCSS vocabulary or simple steps to improving your instruction, you may want to check out a few of the posts and tools on this website.

In today's post, I'm going to share a really simple concept that is essential for you to understand when teaching vocabulary. And, students need to understand it, too.

Stages of Word Learning

When teaching vocabulary, it's important to determine your students' level of familiarity and understanding of the targeted words. How do you easily do this? By keeping in mind the 4 distinct stages of word learning. Not only do you need to know the stages, but you should teach them to your students as well.

First, knowing a word's meaning isn't as simple as "know" or "don't know." Rather, think of understanding a word's meaning like turning on a dimmer switch. In general, whenever a student (or person) hears a word, that word falls into 1 of 4 fairly distinct stages (see image). In the example below, I'll use the term "polygon" to demonstrate the stages.
4 Stages of Word Learning
Example: the term "polygon"

Stage 1: No Understanding {I've never heard or seen the word "polygon."

Stage 2: Heard the word...but Don't Understand What it Means {in other words... I remember hearing a teacher use the word "polygon" but I don't remember what it means.}

Stage 3: General Associations with the Word {in other words... I remember learning about "polygons" in Math class.}

Stage 4: Can Use the Word {in other words... I know that a "polygon" is a flat shape with at least 3 closed lines.}

Using the 4 Stages with Students
The 4 stages of word learning can be used as a formative assessment tool.
For primary students, it can be as simple as teaching the stages. Using several examples, students can provide feedback by raising a finger or fingers (see slides below) indicating which level of understanding they are at for any given word. Then, use this simple strategy to elicit formative feedback as you teach vocabulary.

For intermediate and secondary students, a simple chart can be useful (see slides). Display the words online or on a whiteboard/Smartboard. As you pronounce each word and provide a meaning, have students write the word in the category that best describes their knowledge of each word. Then circulate around the room and see in which category/ies students have placed words on their template. Very quickly you have a pretty good idea of their familiarity with the terms. For students, it can serve as a quick-check to help them see just how much work and practice they may need to master the unit vocabulary. If you want to create a practice set of terms for students, check out Flashcard Stash. In addition, students can use the template while reading/studying and add additional words as they read and learn more about the topic.

The 5 slides below summarize the stages and includes quick application for primary and intermediate/secondary students.

There are a few key ideas to keep in mind as you integrate the 4 stages of word learning into your vocabulary instruction.

Words are learned through multiple exposures over time and in varied contexts. Students won't move from stage 1 or 2 to stage 4 (able to use the word in speaking and writing) by memorizing a meaning. As the teacher, pepper your speech with content vocabulary and higher level terms that students may not be frequently exposed to.

The goal of vocabulary instruction is to move as many words as possible from the lower stages (receptive vocabulary) to level 4 (expressive vocabulary).

Teaching words in clusters or categories is important for providing context and expedites word learning. If students are at stage 3 - general associations - they will refine their understanding of the word more quickly and easily because they have a better sense where the terms "fits."

Create plenty of opportunities to review words through games and activities such as "Save the Last Word for Me".

Teach students both linguistic and non-linguistic (visual and kinetic representations) strategies for independent word learning.

Understanding the 4 stages of word learning is a key principle to implementing effective vocabulary instruction. Become familiar with the stages, and help your students identify and internalize them as well. They'll not only help students become more metacognitive in their thinking about words, but also serve as a simple formative assessment tool for you.
Go to {Vocabulary Resources} in the Teacher Toolkit
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4 Stages of Learning Vocabulary (and why it's important) l Dr. Kimberly's Literacy Blog

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Teaching vocabulary can be tough - but you gotta' do it. Why? Because word learning is connected at the hip to teaching content at any level. And, we know that student achievement and learning is directly related word knowledge. For those new to this blog, I write frequently about vocabulary here and in Blended Vocabulary, ...

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We know that there is a strong relationship between vocabulary, reading comprehension, and high student achievement. Systematic vocabulary instruction is an integral part of a K-12 comprehensive literacy framework for instruction.

Further, word learning is connected at the hip to teaching content at any level. Whether you teach kindergarten or high school students, having a strategic plan for teaching vocabulary should be at the top of your "must-do" list.

So, vocabulary instruction is important. Seems simple enough, doesn't it? Unfortunately, there remains a gap between implementing effective vocabulary instruction and what often takes place in the classroom. I frequently see teachers (and administrators) struggle with the nuts and bolts of vocabulary instruction. Selecting words, choosing effective instructional strategies, and tying in digital tools - it's a lot to tackle, isn't it?
These 5 simple steps will make selecting and teaching vocabulary easier than you might think.
Understanding the key characteristics of effective vocabulary instruction is important for K-12 educators. Why? Because they serve as the foundation for selecting instructional strategies and digital tools to support word learning.
"Top 10" Characteristics of Effective Vocabulary Instruction include:

1. Multiple Exposures: Word learning is shaped through multiple exposures is varied contexts. (Probably THE MOST important idea when it comes to learning new words.

2. Frontload Key Vocabulary: Before reading text or learning new content, introduce key vocabulary that is critical to understanding. Elicit background knowledge, create conversation and connections, and display or point out the words so that students will recognize them.

3. Nonlinguistic Representations: When learning new vocabulary, have students create pictographs, mental images, and pantomime word meanings in order to increase the likelihood of remembering new words.

Check out 7 more key characteristics of effective vocabulary instruction here.
Tiered vocabulary, put simply, is an organizational framework for categorizing words. The Common Core State Standards use the 3-tier vocabulary framework for sorting academic vocabulary. Understanding tiered vocabulary has practical applications for implementing the Common Core and classroom instruction.
The Three Vocabulary Tiers
Tier 1: Common, Known Words
Examples: big, small, house, table, family

In other words, Tier I words are basic, everyday words found frequently in conversation and are part of most children's vocabulary.
Tier 2: High-Frequency Words or Cross-Curricular Vocabulary
Examples: justify, explain, expand, predict, summarize, maintain

Tier 2 words are made up of are general academic words and have utility across a wide range of topics. Another way to think of Tier 2 vocabulary is as cross-curricular terms. For example, the term "justify" and "predict" frequently appear in Science, Social Studies, and English texts. It is important to keep in mind that Tier 2 words are learned primarily through reading and explicit instruction and are key to building a strong academic vocabulary
Tier 3: Low-Frequency, Domain-Specific words
Examples: isotope, tectonic plates, carcinogens, mitosis, lithosphere

Tier 3 words are domain specific vocabulary. Words in this category are low-frequency, specialized words that appear in specific fields or content areas. We anticipate that students will be unfamiliar with Tier 3 words. Beck suggests teaching these words as the need arises for comprehension in specific content areas.

The more you understand and sort vocabulary into the Tier 2 and Tier 3 words, the more instructional implications you'll find. For example, the tiers will help you create content vocabulary lists. In addition, they'll provide a focus for instruction and specific words to focus on during instruction.

Many teachers and principals tell me they believe vocabulary and word learning are key to supporting student's academic growth. I don't doubt their sincerity; however, when many classrooms are void of word walls, classroom libraries, posters, and newspapers, I can't help but believe they've missed a great opportunity for supporting vocabulary growth.

You see, a print-rich environment is not only important for early literacy development but supports word learning as well. Students not only learn words through direct instruction, but also develop their knowledge and exposure to new words indirectly through independent reading, word walls, and exposure to print across the school day.
Key elements of a literacy-rich environment include:

classroom libraries that include a variety of genres and text types,

content posters,

anchor charts - teacher-made and co-created with students,

word walls,

labels,

literacy workstations,

writing centers,

computers,

display of student work,

displays of books & information,

bulletin boards, and

plenty of opportunity to read, write, listen, and speak.

Building a toolbox of effective instructional strategies is essential for creating a language-rich environment that fosters and supports word learning for every student. Many strategies are highlighted in journals and across the web. The best vocabulary strategies engage students in learning words through a variety of strategies that include personalization, visualizing and creating other nonlinguistic representations, identifying synonyms and antonyms, verbalizing, writing in notebooks and journals, and playing with words through game-like activities.

Previously on this blog, I've highlighted and summarized numerous evidence-based vocabulary strategies. Most posts include downloadable templates to support your instructional efforts.

Digital tools have proven quite promising to support word learning. Compared to their more traditional counterparts, online tools provide a broader array of information about words and word meanings. In addition, some tools allow teachers to easily customize words so that students can practice, review, and play games with content or unit-specific words.
Digital tools allows students to:

hear pronunciations

read words in a variety of authentic examples

view photos and images related to words

reinforce word learning through interactive games

play with and manipulate language

discover rhyming words, and

collaborate with classmates to create virtual words walls.

I've previously reviewed " 21 Digital Tools to Support Word Learning " which has become a "most-read" post. The online tools are grouped into 4 categories: reference tools, word clouds, games and review, and word walls and virtual field trips. Review these tools and select a few that best support your instructional goals.

Final Thoughts

Five simple steps. Don't make vocabulary instruction more overwhelming than it needs to be.

Start simply by getting familiar with the key characteristics of effective vocabulary instruction (Step 1). Then, identify core vocabulary and sort words into Tier 2 and Tier 3 academic vocabulary (Step 2). Don't forget to have fun creating a print-rich environment that supports word learning (Step 3). Finally, identify and master several evidence-based instructional strategies (Step 4), and choose a few digital tools to provide support and practice for students (Step 5).

I've found that when teachers become intentional in their vocabulary instruction, they become excited about word learning and regularly identify, instruct, and have conversations around words with their students.
The best part is that teachers soon begin to observe measurable growth in their students. Flickr Photo Attribution: UncommonEye Photostream

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{5 Steps Series} 5 Simple Steps for Effective Vocabulary Instruction l Dr. Kimberly's Literacy Blog

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We know that there is a strong relationship between vocabulary, reading comprehension, and high student achievement. Systematic vocabulary instruction is an integral part of a K-12 comprehensive literacy framework for instruction. Further, word learning is connected at the hip to teaching content at any level.

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Reversing Readacide by Kelly Gallagher 03 2010

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Top 10 Characteristics of Effective Vocabulary Instruction

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Top 10 Characteristics of Effective Vocabulary Instruction

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Improving Adolescent Literacy by What Works Clearinghouse

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Links to Vocab Strategies & Printable Resources

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Book Suggestions for Primary, Intermediate, and MS Students

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Marzano's 6-Step Process for Academic Vocabulary