Explicitly Teaching Vocabulary in Your Class

My recent experience:
Several of our staff went to a workshop a few weeks ago on teaching vocabulary. Although I know that vocabulary is important, in the past I’ve been guilty of just giving students words and definitions. In the workshop we learned (really reviewed I had learned it before—just never really thought I had time to do it) some cool low prep ways to teach vocabulary and my team teacher(Lucilla) and I decided to give up 30 minutes of our valuable “teaching time” to try one of these strategies.

Here’s what we did:

We picked 7 important words for the unit. Most were big concept words like imperialism, nationalism…

We had students fold a sheet of paper to make 4 columns with these labels: Word, Meaning, Picture, and Related Words
Then students copied words and meaning from the board. As they copied I further explained the words as they would relate to the new unit.

Then students drew pictures to illustrate the meanings and came up with related words.

We were amazed by the effort students put into the picture and the related words. In fact, some students used vocabulary words they learned in their English class. (Go 9th grade English teachers!)


We then used the words each class in context of the lesson.

Was it worth the time?

Yes! In the assessment given to one of the classes yesterday, the lowest grade was an 85!

Now I know there are other variables that could have affected this outcome, but I can’t help but believe that this activity helped the students really understand the important vocabulary.

We will definitely be using this really easy strategy again! :)