Top 5 Mistakes Teachers Make Teaching Vocabulary

Teaching vocabulary can be tricky!  Most of us never took a class in college which covered effective reading instruction...AND as elementary teachers we have more than just one subject to devote our time to studying. 

Some teachers may just be winging the whole "vocabulary thing,"  Teachers are simply doing the best they can with the tools they have in their toolkit.  So, it seems reasonable that we might be making a few mistakes.  The good news---common mistakes are easy to fix!  

Keep reading to find out the top 5 mistakes teachers make with vocabulary, AND what you can do to fix those mistakes!

1. Not teaching vocabulary

When someone doesn't feel efficacious about something, or see the benefit....sometimes it gets skipped or pushed to the "I'll just do this later list."  Vocabulary instruction is NOT something that should be skipped.  

Research supports that teachers should be directly teaching 3-5 words per text selection!  This means students should be adding 2,000 to 3,000 new words per year to their reading vocabularies. (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2002).  Check out A Routine for Explicit Vocabulary Instruction for how to directly teach a term. 

2. Not explicitly and directly teaching words

We learn vocabulary in two ways, incidentally and and intentionally.  Incidental learning is when children are indirectly exposed to words.  Indirect exposure to words happens when students engage in oral language experiences (talking with friends, adults, siblings, etc.), listening to books being read and independently reading.  Most of our vocabulary is acquired incidentally, however this cannot be the only way we learn new terms!

Intentional learning of words happens through direct and explicit instruction.  As mentioned above, research supports teachers directly teaching 3-5 words per text selection, and getting students to truly own a word.  This means students students should explicitly taught some 400 words per year in school (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2002).  

To truly own a word, students must be able to pronounce the word, understand its meaning and use it during conversation or in writing.  Check out A Routine for Explicit Vocabulary Instruction for how to directly teach a term! 

3. Not illustrating connections to other words

Our brains crave organization and patterning.  As we learn words, our brains are creating pathways to connect new words with known words. Every word in your mental dictionary is connected to other words, ideas or images.   

Help students truly understand a vocabulary term by facilitating connections.  Some great classification activities include the following:

• Open sorts--give students a group of words and have them group the words how they see fit.  
• Identification of categories--show students a group of words that go together and have them determine a category label.

Check out this free one-pager resource which includes 12 different ways you can have students sort and classify words!  A list of words can be compiled based on a spelling pattern, phonics skill, vocabulary or grammar concept!  

4. Not providing ample opportunities to use newly learned terms

One principle of effective vocabulary instruction is providing multiple exposures to a word and it's meaning.  There is great improvement in vocabulary when students encounter vocabulary words often (National Reading Panel, 2000).  Students have to see a word multiple times, and in multiple contexts to truly own the word.

Check out Resources to Teach Vocabulary for oodles of ideas on how to provide students with multiple opportunities to interact with vocabulary terms.  

5. Not selecting the right words to teach

Determining which words to teach our students can be tricky.  There are just SO. MANY. WORDS!

Leading literacy experts (e.g. Archer & Hughes, Beck, Graves, Stahl & Nagy) all agree on the following five rules when selecting vocabulary to explicitly teach.

1. Choose words students probably don't know
2. Choose words that are crucial for text understanding
3. Choose words that students will encounter often
4. Teach words that are difficult to learn without explicit instruction
5. Select 3-5 words for each text.

If you are looking for more information on how to best select vocabulary words to explicitly teach, check Choosing Words to Teach by Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown and Linda Kucan published on Reading Rocket's website.  These ladies are the true guru's of teaching vocabulary!