Aemilianum College Inc.

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION & BUSINESS

Rizal St. Piot, West District, Sorsogon City
Sorsogon, Philippines 4700
Contact No. (056) 211 – 6012
Email Address: aemilianumcollege@gmail.com
www.aemilianum.edu.ph

SUBJECT: Teaching English in Elementary Grades (Language Arts)

COURSE/YEAR: BEED-2
A.Y./TERM: 2022-2023/1st Semester
INSTRUCTOR: DAVE B. JACOB

I. INTRODUCTION
Teaching English and Language Arts

In elementary school, language arts classes focus on basic reading, writing and linguistic /
communication skills. Periods of silent sustained reading, cursive writing, syntax, thematic
writing and vocabulary are all major focal points of elementary lessons. Through these
exercises, children are expected to develop reading and writing skills at an early age.

II. SUBJECT MATTER

 Teaching Vocabulary Effectively
III. LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of these lessons, the students are expected to:
1. Be familiarized with the best practices in teaching vocabulary
2. Distinguish each step on teaching vocabulary effectively
3. Identify the importance of this practice
IV. DISCUSSION
LESSON 2
Teaching Vocabulary Effectively

6 Effective Strategies For Teaching Vocabulary

A student’s vocabulary knowledge and skills determine his or her proficiency in comprehension
and language use. Therefore, whether we are teaching writing, reading or supporting our students
to communicate more effectively their ideas, vocabulary should be part of our daily instruction.
But what strategies we should use for teaching vocabulary?

The average high school student is estimated to have a vocabulary of 50,000 words and learn
about 3,500 new words each year (Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2002).
To build that amount of vocabulary, we should not just focus on using dictionaries as the sole
source for word information and asking students to fill in word definitions. But we should also
involve them in developing their own vocabulary.

This is through actively engaging them in word exploration and stimulating their interest in
knowing more words.

In fact, research evidence indicates that vocabulary development is more successful when
learners are fully engaged in activities that require them to attend carefully to the new words and
even to use them in productive tasks (Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001)

So, to develop your students’ vocabulary skills, I have compiled a list of engaging strategies for
teaching vocabulary. These include both direct and indirect instruction.

1. Word Wall
To help your students get more engaged in vocabulary development, you need to nurture word
consciousness. This means raising students’ awareness of, and interest in all sorts of words and
their meanings.
A Word Wall can help you achieve this. This is a collection of words that are displayed in large
visible letters on a wall, bulletin board, or other display surfaces in a classroom.

So, set this wall and encourage your students ‘to walk the wall’ and hang their favorite words,
new or unknown, on it.

Then, invite their classmates to add sticky notes with pictures or graphics, synonyms, antonyms,
or related words. Then, student partners walk along the wall to quiz each other on the words
(Graves & Watts-Taffe,2008).

Use the Word Wall one or more times a week. You’ll help your students make connections
between new and known words.
Since this is an ongoing activity during the whole year, you can keep observational notes of
those students who are posting, responding to their words and those who are not adding words to
the wall.
This will help you better understand what your students need to expand their vocabulary.

2. Word Box
Word Box is one of the strategies for teaching vocabulary. This is a weekly strategy that can help
students retain and use words more effectively.

Students select words to submit to the word box on Friday. These are words they find interesting
or ones they want to understand better. They either use the word in their own sentence or take the
same sentence where this word was found.

Then, select five words to teach the following week.

Monday: Introduce the five words in context, explain them, then tack them to the Word Wall.
Tuesday: Ask students to create a non-linguistic representation of the words.
Wednesday: Discuss the meaning of the words allowing think-pair-shares.
Thursday: Ask students to write sentences using those words.
Friday: This is the day to assess students’ learning of the five words using this activity.
Ask one student to answer fill-ins for five words. Give students three cards that can hold up:
green cards show they agree with the student’s answer, yellow they are unsure and red ones they
disagree.

For assessing, use a checklist with the vocabulary running horizontally across the top margin and
the class list running vertically down the side. (Adapted from Grant et al., 2015, p.195)

3. Vocabulary Notebooks
Ask your students to maintain vocabulary notebooks throughout the year where they write the
meaning of the new words.

You can introduce a new word each week and work together with students to explore its
meaning. Then, ask them to sketch a picture to illustrate the word and present their drawings to
the class at the end of the week.

Another way to use vocabulary notebooks:

Students create a chart. The first column indicates the word, where it was found, and the sample
sentence in which it appeared.

The other columns depend on your students’ needs.

You can include a column for meaning (where students define the word or add a synonym), for
word parts and related word forms (where they identify the parts and list any other words related
to it), a picture, other occurrences (if they have seen or heard this word before, they describe
where) and for practice or how they used this word. (Lubliner, 2005)

4. Semantic Mapping
These are maps or webs of words that can help visually display the meaning-based connections
between a word or phrase and a set of related words or concepts.

Teach your students how to use semantic mapping. Pick a word you intend to explain, draw a
map or web on the board (or on Zoom whiteboard or any digital tool in case you’re teaching
online) and put this word in the center of the map. Then, ask students to add related words or
phrases similar in meaning to the new word. (See the example below)

5. Word Cards
Word cards can help students review frequently learned words and so improve retention.

On one side of the card, students write the target word and its part of speech (whether it’s a verb,
noun, adjective, etc.).

On the top half of the other side, they write the word’s definition (in English and/ or a
translation). They also write an example and a description of its pronunciation. The bottom half
of the card can be used for additional notes once they start using the word.

Ask students to add more information about the word each time they practice or observe it
(sentences, collocations, etc.).

Yet, advise them not to add too much information in order to facilitate more reviewing the cards.

Devote regularly class time for students to bring their word cards to class. Involve them in
activities such as describing the new words, quizzing one another, categorizing them according
to subject or part of speech.

Also, show your students how to store and organize those cards. This is, for instance, by putting
them into a box with the categories they select or ordering them in terms of difficulty. (Schmitt
& Schmitt, 2005)
6. Word Learning Strategies
Our students often have only partial knowledge of the words they learn in the classroom. This is
so since a word can have different meanings which they may not be familiar with.

Therefore, teaching students word learning strategies is important to help them become
independent word learners. This is by teaching, modelling and providing a variety of strategies
that serve different purposes.

Here are some examples of word-learning strategies.

a) Using word parts

Breaking words into meaningful parts facilitates decoding. So, studying words’ parts can help
students guess the meaning of new words from context.

There are three basic ways that word parts are combined in English: prefixing, suffixing, and
compounding.

Providing explanations about their use and meanings with illustration is necessary. Yet, it is still
not enough.

You need to provide opportunities for students to experiment with word-building skills.

For instance, you can hand out a list of productive prefixes and have students compile a list of
words using them. Then, ask them to compare the function of the prefixes in the various
examples.

However, consider your students’ level since word parts are more useful to students with larger
vocabularies. For instance, a student who doesn’t know the meaning of the adjective content
cannot guess the word discontent.

Remember also that learning word parts is an ongoing process. So, encourage your students to
continue experimenting with them. (Zimmerman, 2009a)

b) Asking questions about word

Knowing a word means knowing about its many aspects: its meaning(s), collocations,
grammatical function, derivations, and register.

So, you can encourage your students to explore a new word’s meaning(s) by asking them to
address detailed questions about those features and answer them.

Students will ask questions like these:

• Are there certain words that often occur before or after the word? (collocation)
• Are there any grammatical patterns that occur with the word? (grammar).
• Are there any familiar roots or affixes for this word? (Word parts)
• Is the word used by both men and women? (register/appropriateness)
• Is the word used in both speaking and writing?
(register/appropriateness)
• Could it be used to refer to people? Animals? Things? (meaning)
• Does it have any positive or negative connotations? (meaning) (Zimmerman,2009a)
c) Reflecting
When students learn new words, it does not necessarily mean they’ll use them. Students may
avoid using words in writing because they are unsure of the spelling. When they speak, they may
not be willing to use certain words as they roughly understand them in context.

Encouraging students to self-assess their knowledge of each new word they learn can help them
focus on areas needing practices. Here is an example of a self-assessment scale students can use.

Besides these 6 engaging strategies for teaching vocabulary, here are some essential tips to
follow while using them:

1) Identify the potential list of words to be taught. Keep the number of words to a minimum
(three to five words in one lesson) to ensure there is ample time for in-depth vocabulary
instruction, yet enough time for students to practice them.

2) Expose students to multiple contexts in which the new words can be used. This will support
them to develop a deeper understanding of these words and how they’re used flexibly.
You can do so by giving students frequent opportunities to hear the meaning of the words, read
content where these words are included, and also use them in speaking and writing.

3) Encourage extensive reading because this gives students repeated or multiple exposures to

words and is also one of the means by which students see vocabulary in rich contexts.
So, for rich vocabulary development, use a variety of strategies for teaching vocabulary and
provide the necessary support and guided practice. Besides, assess vocabulary learning and
encourage students to learn more words outside the classroom.

V. ASSESSMENT/EXERCISES
Explain. Use your own words.
Module Lesson 2 Assessment:
1. What are the 6 effective ways in teaching vocabulary? Describe each. (5 points)

2. Among the prelisted ways, pick one and explain how can you practice this when you are
already a teacher. What is the importance of teaching Vocabulary? (5 points)

VI. SELF-ASSESSMENT/REFLECTION
From the module,
A. I UNDERSTAND THAT……

B. I REALIZE THAT…..

VII. LEARNING RESOURCES/REFERENCES

Author: Zineb Djoub

Title: 6 Effective Strategies For Teaching Vocabulary
Date published: January 23 2021
URL: 6 Effective Strategies For Teaching Vocabulary - EduLearn2Change
 NAME: COURSE:

V. ASSESSMENT/EXERCISES
Explain. Use your own words.
Module Lesson 2 Assessment:
1. What are the 6 effective ways in teaching vocabulary? Describe each. (5 points)

2. Among the prelisted ways, pick one and explain how can you practice this when you are
already a teacher. What is the importance of teaching Vocabulary? (5 points)

REFLECTION
I UNDERSTAND THAT……
I REALIZE THAT…..