When teaching vocabulary, select 12 – 15 words per week that are outside of the students’ current oral vocabulary and that the students are likely to encounter frequently in text. The words should be interesting, useful, and offer students a more sophisticated way of expressing familiar concepts. Multiple exposures to the meaning of unfamiliar words deepen students‘ understanding of a specific word and how it functions in different contexts. Word-learning strategies include
morphemic analysis to understand the meaningful parts of words and
contextual analysis to infer the meaning from the surrounding text and definitions. Teachers should be aware that dictionary definitions are frequently not helpful to young students and the teacher will need to provide a “student-friendly” definition (e.g., “fortunate” –when you are lucky, or “absurd" -when something is silly or goofy). Students develop an increased interest in and awareness of words when rich and varied vocabulary experiences are provided.