Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility Page 7: Vocabulary
  • IRIS Center
  • Resources
    • IRIS Resource Locator
      Modules, case studies, activities, & more
    • Evidence-Based Practice Summaries
      Research annotations
    • High-Leverage Practices
      IRIS resources on HLPs
    • Films
      Portrayals of people with disabilities
    • Children's Books
      Portrayals of people with disabilities
    • Glossary
      Disability related terms
    • For PD Providers
      Sample PD activities, planning forms, & more
    • For Faculty
      Top tips, coursework planning, & more
    • Website Navigation Videos
      Getting around our Website & modules
    • New & Coming Soon
      Latest modules & resources
    • IRIS Archived Resources
      Modules, alignment tools, & more
  • PD Options
    • PD Certificates for Educators
      Our certificate, your PD hours
    • Log in to Your IRIS PD
    • For PD Providers
      Sample PD activities, planning forms, & more
    • IRIS+ School & District Platform
      A powerful tool for school leaders
  • Articles & Reports
    • Articles
      Articles about IRIS use & efficacy
    • Internal IRIS Reports
      Reports on IRIS use & accomplishments
    • External Evaluation Reports
      Evaluations of the IRIS Center
    • IRIS Stories
      Our resources, your stories
    • News & Events
      What, when, & where it's happening
  • Help
    • Help & Support
      Get the full benefit from our resources
    • Website Navigation Videos
      Getting around our Website & modules
  • RTI (Part 3): Reading Instruction
Challenge
Initial Thoughts
Perspectives & Resources

What is RTI?

  • 1: A Quick Overview of RTI

How can teachers increase student reading success in early grades?

  • 2: High-Quality Instruction: Instructional Practices
  • 3: High-Quality Instruction: Comprehensive Core Reading Program

What components comprise high-quality reading instruction?

  • 4: Phonemic Awareness
  • 5: Phonics and Word Study
  • 6: Fluency
  • 7: Vocabulary
  • 8: Reading Comprehension
  • 9: Considerations for English Learners

How is high-quality instruction integrated into the RTI approach?

  • 10: Effective Instruction at Tier 1
  • 11: Effective Instruction at Tier 2
  • 12: Effective Instruction at Tier 3

Resources

  • 13: References, Additional Resources, and Credits
Wrap Up
Assessment
Provide Feedback

What components comprise high-quality reading instruction?

Page 7: Vocabulary

students raising handsVocabulary refers to a knowledge of words and what they mean. Students learn vocabulary through a variety of contexts such as talking, interacting, and playing with others; listening to stories; watching television; and attending school. There are two types of vocabulary:

  • Oral vocabulary refers to the recognition of words that we hear and speak.
  • Reading vocabulary refers to the recognition of words that we read and write.

Why Should I Teach It?

Though students can learn the basics of phonemic awareness and phonics without having a large vocabulary, research shows that beginning readers with a relatively extensive vocabulary will have an easier time recognizing printed words. Conversely, students who begin school with poor vocabularies are at a big disadvantage. These students tend to have a difficult time with fluency and comprehension, potentially leading to a dislike of reading. Subsequently, this dislike triggers an avoidance of reading, preventing students from learning new vocabulary and, thus, creates a negative cycle that results in poor academic achievement. In addition to affecting academic skills, a poor vocabulary impacts students in social situations.

Research Shows

  • Students’ reading comprehension and overall success relates strongly to the extent of their vocabulary knowledge.
    (Lehr et al., 2006)
  • The relationship of vocabulary to reading comprehension gets stronger as reading material becomes more complex and the vocabulary becomes more extensive.
    (Verhoeven and Snow, 2002)

How Do I Teach It?

When Should I Teach It?

Vocabulary instruction typically begins in kindergarten and continues through third grade and beyond.

Vocabulary instruction should occur in all grades because it benefits all students regardless of the students’ reading levels.

Students learn new vocabulary through indirect and direct methods:

  • Indirect vocabulary instruction involves students’ learning words and their meanings through daily conversations and through independent reading. Teachers need to consistently use new and interesting words as part of classroom instruction. More important, teachers need to read out loud to students and encourage them to read independently.
  • Direct vocabulary instruction involves the intentional focus on words and their meanings. Teachers need to use a variety of methods to help students learn new vocabulary words directly.

Direct instruction helps students to learn new vocabulary, especially words essential to understanding specific lessons; however, research has demonstrated that most students are able to learn only 8–10 new words per week through direct instruction. Research also shows that elementary students should learn approximately 3,000 new words each year. This means that if students are learning approximately 400 words per year through direct instruction then they must learn the remaining 2,600 words through indirect instruction. Therefore, teachers should provide opportunities for both direct and indirect vocabulary instruction.

Review the table below for an explanation of each type of direct and indirect instruction and for an example of each.

Vocabulary Instruction
Author characters
What? What It Is How To Implement
indirect Incidental teaching New words are learned by happenstance or naturally through the context of the students’ environment.
  • Introduce unfamiliar words during daily interactions with students.
  • Use new words in songs, or ask students to read books that incorporate new words.
direct Explicit vocabulary instruction Teachers clearly demonstrate or explain what a word means.
  • Use discussions, pictures, and examples to expose students to the new word.
  • Relate the word to students’ lives.
  • Engage in activities that require students to use the new word.

By demonstrating the usefulness of words, teachers use direct instruction to help students develop their vocabulary. For instance, teachers can show students how authors choose particular words to convey certain meanings. In this video, the teacher demonstrates to her class the use of word cards and a word web to develop vocabulary skills (time: 1:23).

/wp-content/uploads/module_media/rti03_reading_media/movies/rti03_07_a.mp4

Copyright © by the Texas Education Agency and University
of Texas at Austin. All rights reserved” on all Licensed Materials.

Transcript

Transcript: Vocabulary

Teacher: We’ve been studying a unit on penguins, and today we’re going to view some of the words that we’ve learned.

Narrator: She develops students’ awareness of interesting words and concepts.

Teacher: Ohhhhhh, I like this word. Everybody say this word.

Students: “Rookery.”

Teacher: Who can tell me something about this word that has to do with a penguin? William?

William: One million penguins can live in a rookery.

Teacher: Exactly! That’s a lot of what?

Students: Penguins.

Narrator: Later, the class brainstorms to record and categorize new words they’ve learned.

Teacher: We’re going to come up with some vocabulary words that will go with each one of these areas. And we’re going to begin with eat. Now I want you to think about all the facts and all the books that we’ve read about penguins, and I want you to think of something that penguins eat. Chaney?

Chaney: Krill.

Teacher: Wow, that’s a good word. Can you tell me what a krill is, because we don’t use that word very often?

Chaney: It’s like a small shrimp.

Teacher: Excellent!

Narrator: Word maps reinforce students’ understanding of word relationships, enhancing comprehension.

Visuals, such as graphic organizers and content word walls, support vocabulary development for all readers.

Here are some helpful hints on how teachers can incorporate vocabulary instruction in the classroom:

Tips for Teaching

  • Be aware of factors that influence vocabulary instruction:
    • Students’ learning strengths and weaknesses
    • Complexity of the words
    • Students’ familiarity with the concepts represented by new words
  • Determine important vocabulary to teach before asking students to read about them in texts, and consider:
    • How important the word is to the unit of study
    • To what extent the word is useful outside the context of the lesson
    • Whether there are words the students can learn on their own through the context of the lesson
    • Whether there are words in the unit of study that may motivate students to learn other new words
  • Provide repeated exposure to words.
  • Develop activities that allow students to use words across different contexts.
  • Engage students in discussions that include new vocabulary.
  • Make available a number of good books (both narrative and expository) on a variety of topics.
  • Encourage independent learning of new vocabulary from context.
  • Teach meanings of prefixes, suffixes, and common root words.
  • When teaching vocabulary directly, use a variety of strategies for teaching a word’s meaning (e.g., simple definition, synonyms, antonyms, good examples and bad examples, models, pictures, demos).
  • During vocabulary instruction, words should be introduced in a context with which students are already familiar.
  • When both the word and the concept are unknown, the word should be taught explicitly in order to increase comprehension.
Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Back Next
1...678910111213
Join Our E-Newsletter Sign Up
  • Home
  • About IRIS
  • Sitemap
  • Web Accessibility
  • Glossary
  • Terms of Use
  • Careers at IRIS
  • Contact Us
Join Our E-Newsletter Sign Up

The IRIS Center Peabody College Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN 37203 [email protected]. The IRIS Center is funded through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) Grant #H325E220001. The contents of this website do not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. Project Officer, Anna Macedonia.

Copyright 2025 Vanderbilt University. All rights reserved.

* For refund and privacy policy information visit our Help & Support page.

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

  • Vanderbilt Peabody College
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok