Vocabulary Development/Enrichment

*If you can get your hands on this book you should. Marzano basically says that effective vocabulary instruction includes the following steps:
1. Present students with a brief explanation of the new term of phrase. (I've not spoken to the man - but I am certain that Marzano did NOT intend that the students copy the definition from the dictionary. The definition needs to be written in student-friendly language. )
2. Present students with a nonlinguistic representation of the new term or phrase. (With Historical terms this can be difficult - "imperialism" for example had me scratching my head. I often use political cartoons to help with some of these more complex terms - obviously dissecting the opinion from th actual meaning of the word.)
3. Ask the students to generate their own explanations or descriptions of the new term or phrase. (After I present students with the explanation of the term and a visual representation of its meaning - I have them work with me to generate a list of words or phrases that are related to the word. Ex. Imperialism: take over, own, control.... Doing this provides students with a word bank of sorts that they can draw on when generating their own explanations of the new term. It also serves as a way to "tease out" whether or not the students have fully grasped the meaning of the word.)
4. Ask the students to generate their own nonlinguistic representation of the new term or phrase.
5. Periodically ask students to review the accuracy of their explanations or terms. (I've taken this fifth step to mean two things: our understanding of words changes over time as we make connections with new learning AND if we are going to ask students to take a word into their vocabulary then it needs to be USED)





*I can't stress enough how much I love this website "Visuwords." It's difficult to explain - so go see it for yourself. You type in a word and then a web is created that shows how that word is connected to others. (*preview words and the connections made to determine that they are suitable for your students.)