Information for Teaching Vocabulary

When teaching vocabulary, teachers want to use words that are applicable to the students’ lives and that they are going to be able to find interesting. Words need to be conceptually related, or words that deal with the students’ schema. The students need to be able to connect with a word. Vocabulary needs to be taught within context before teaching the actual definition. The word should not be taught in isolation. Students learn more through the context in which the word is used. Words need to be used in high utility, so that students become more familiar with the words. Words that are important to the class need to be used often; however, limit the amount of words you want to teach. Too many words cause an overload. Keep in mind that words require time to be a part of generative vocabulary, which is Stahl’s deep processing theory. Strategies for teaching vocabulary are also very helpful in helping students become familiar with and retain words. I think the key component of helping students retain vocabulary is to engage them in activities. Getting the students as involved as possible is important because it causes effective learning. By engaging students through doing, watching, and making words relevant, they will start to feel more comfortable with the word and use it more frequently. Something I have done when teaching young children basketball terms is to have them associate a long whistle with the phrase triple threat. When a long whistle is blown, everyone has to stop what they are doing and get into triple threat while yelling “triple threat.” After they are all in triple threat, I ask what they can do out of triple threat. Everyone then has to yell, “shoot, pass, dribble.” I have found it very successful because it is repeated over and over again at random times during practice. It is a great way to help them remember a key term and it is also a classroom management tool. It gets them to stop moving and engaged in what I am about to say.