The Reading Teacher's Sourcebook - The Meadows Center for ...

Here is a helpful checklist for planning vocabulary instruction:PREVIEW the text.Figure 55. Checklist for Planning Vocabulary Instruction.Planning for Vocabulary Instruction ChecklistIDENTIFY:(You may not be able to directly teach all of these words.)Academic words and critical content-specific words.Big-idea and multiple-meaning words.Words students must understand in order to comprehend the text.Words that may be unfamiliar to students.ELIMINATE:Words that are adequately defined in context. Discuss these words while reading instead of preteachingthe words.Words likely to be in students’ background knowledge. Discuss these words during the activation ofprior knowledge part of the lesson.Words students may know based on structure: prefix, suffix, or base word. Discuss the meaning ofthese word parts before or during reading, as necessary.Based on Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York:Guilford; Feldman, K., & Kinsella, K. (2005). Narrowing the language gap: The case for explicit vocabulary instruction. NewYork: Scholastic; and Lehr, F., Osborn, J., & Hiebert, E. H. (2004). A focus on vocabulary. Honolulu, HI: Pacific Resources forEducation and Learning.The following sections include vocabulary lessons designed to empower students with knowledge of wordsand their meaning, the ability to understand and use the words they learn, and a curiosity about the wordsaround them. The goal is to give students ownership of their own vocabulary.The vocabulary lessons are organized in the following manner:Word knowledgeWord consciousnessWord learningSemantic mappingSemantic feature analysisGenerating examples and nonexamples of wordsPrepared participationPossible sentencesWord partsContext cluesVocabulary strategyThe Reading Teacher’s Sourcebook 141