Choosing Words to Teach

Subject Area and Grade Span: Schoolwide, Grades K – 6 

What it is:

Although students must know and understand the vocabulary needed to master the California content standards, it is impractical to try to explicitly teach each and every one. Therefore, it is necessary to prioritize the words to address. When making decisions about selecting words to teach, Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002) recommend consideration of the following criteria: importance and utility, instructional potential (usefulness), and conceptual understanding (difficulty).

What it looks like: 

• Tier I: Basic words that rarely require instruction in school (i.e., clock, table, happy)
• Tier II: Appear frequently in a variety of oral and written language; sophisticated words for concepts that students can explain using words they already know (i.e., merchant, required, maintain)
• Tier III: Rare and content-specific words that need only be taught as they relate to understanding a unit of instruction or informational text (i.e., chlorophyll, asteroid, denominator, indolent)

Special attention should be placed on teaching Tier II words based on the following criteria:

• Importance and utility – words that are characteristic of mature language users and are frequently encountered
• Instructional potential – words that have rich connections to other words and concepts
• Conceptual understanding – words for which students understand the concept; words that provide precise and specific meaning to the concept

How you know it’s working:

• Students’ oral and written vocabulary knowledge becomes more precise.
• Students develop a general interest in word learning.

Things to consider:

• English learners and students of generational poverty may need direct instruction of Tier I words.

Reference:

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York: The Guilford Press.