Teaching Vocabulary in Context

Whether you teach middle school or high school, one of the best methods of vocabulary instruction is teaching new words straight from what your students are reading.

Here are a few helpful ideas, but we’d love to hear yours, too! Let us know in the comments.

Teaching Vocabulary from Literature

Teaching your students vocabulary words that come from the books they’re reading for class is a great way to combine literature and vocabulary study.

This can be as simple as collecting a list of words from each chapter and asking your students to define them. However, your students may not retain the words for any length of time unless they practice them and demonstrate that they understand their meanings.

Try this:

1. List the words you want your students to learn and include the page numbers on which these words can be found.
2. Ask your students to read the passages that surround the words and write their own definitions of each word based on how it’s used in the passage.
3. Have them consult a dictionary when they’re finished to determine how close their definitions are to the accepted meaning.

Doing this forces students to think about the words as they’re reading, and writing their own definitions forces them to think even more about how the words are used and what they mean. If there are words that can have multiple meanings, make sure to point these alternate meanings out.

Another method is to ask them to write sentences in which they use the word in question. Usually, this will be enough to show you whether they understand the word or not, but you may need to see several sentences. After all, many words have subtle shades of meaning and students may not understand the precise use of these words unless you guide them to that understanding.

Yet another way to teach vocabulary from literature is with more «traditional» tools—fill-in-the-blank sentences, multiple-choice questions, etc. If you want to save time creating these lessons, check out our series of downloadable teaching guides appropriately called Vocabulary from Literature.

Related Post: 5 Engaging Exercises for Vocabulary Practice

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