Strategies, Practices and Tools
Decades of research provides a clear understanding of how skilled reading develops and how to most effectively support children in learning to read proficiently. Evidence-based, structured literacy instruction develops all the foundational language and literacy skills that must be woven together so that children can make meaning from the words they read.
The information presented here is intended to complement evidence-based core reading curricula and intervention programs already in place and help educators fill in gaps or modify their approaches with effective strategies, instructional practices, and tools and activities to implement them.
Early childhood educators can focus their practices to help children build language and emergent literacy skills. Pre-K and K-3 educators can find evidence-based ways to provide explicit, implicit, and incidental instruction across the essential components of literacy. And English Language Arts teachers across grades 4-12 will find effective practices to help students meet the increasing need for skilled reading.
Instructional Strategy
Provide explicit vocabulary instruction.
Vocabulary instruction is an important part of reading and language arts classes in middle school and high school. By providing adolescent students with explicit vocabulary instruction, these students will learn new words and strengthen their independent skills of understanding the meaning of a text. It is important for educators to understand that vocabulary instruction must extend beyond students memorizing definitions. Studies show that requiring students to look up the meaning of words in the dictionary and using the word in a sentence have found consistently poor results on students’ vocabulary growth.
Source: Kamil et al., 2008; Glass, 2020; Lane, 2014
Effective Practices
- Dedicate a regular time during classroom instruction to provide explicit vocabulary instruction.
- Provide repeated exposure to new words in multiple oral and written contexts and allow sufficient practice sessions.
- Researchers estimate that it could take students as many as 17 exposures for a student to learn a new word.
- Provide students with opportunities to use new vocabulary words through activities such as discussions, writing, and extended reading.
- Teach synonyms, antonyms, and alternate meaning of words.
- Select appropriate words to teach.
- To determine how to choose words for instruction, teacher should understand the three-tier system of categorizing words:
- Tier 1: Words that are typically already in students’ vocabulary. These words usually don’t need to be explicitly taught.
- Tier 2: Words that often appear in texts but are not commonly used in everyday conservations. These words should be the focus of explicit vocabulary instruction prior to reading a text.
- Tier 3: Words that are rare and are recommended for instruction when encountered in a text.
- To determine how to choose words for instruction, teacher should understand the three-tier system of categorizing words:
- Provide students with strategies to promote independent vocabulary skills.
- Teach how to use the morphological structure of words to derive the meaning of an unknown word.
- Teach students how to analyze semantic, syntactic, or context to determine the meaning of unknown words.
Source: Kamil et al., 2008; Glass, 2020
Tools and Activities
Frayer Model (Graphic Organizer)
The Frayer model is a vocabulary tool that helps build students' vocabulary. It requires students to define a vocabulary word or concept, generate examples and non-examples, provide characteristics, and illustrate the meaning of the word.
Download from AdLit
Semantic Map (Graphic Organizer)
Semantic maps (or graphic organizers) help students, especially struggling students and those with disabilities, to identify, understand, and recall the meaning of words they read in the text.
Learn More from Reading Rockets
Related
Developmental benchmarks and literacy behaviors that most children display at a particular age/grade.
Evidence-based reading interventions support students who are identified as struggling with specific foundational literacy skills.
Evidence-based core curricula, interventions, and supplemental programs play a critical role in supporting students’ reading success.
While seemingly effortless, good reading is made up of a set of complex skills and strategies.