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How We Learn Vocabulary from Reading Part II

In Part I, I debunked the word list method of vocabulary instruction. The give-them-twenty-words-on-Monday-and-test-on-Friday approach is as American as apple pie, but is also highly inefficient. The...

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How to Double Vocabulary Acquisition from Reading Part III

In “The Problem with Most Vocabulary Instruction Part I,” I debunked the inefficient word list method of vocabulary instruction. In “How We Learn Vocabulary from Reading Part II,” I showed how reading...

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How Not to Teach Context Clues

To most intermediate, middle, high school, and college teachers, teaching context clues means helping students consciously identify and apply strategies to figure out the meaning of unknown words...

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How to Teach Reading Intervention

Teaching reading intervention is qualitatively different from teaching beginning reading. By definition, the initial reading instruction did not “take” to a sufficient degree, so things must be done...

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Context Clues Vocabulary Review Game

Frequent readers of my blog know that I value context clues instruction and practice to enable students to problem-solve the meanings of unknown words and to increase their vocabularies. Readers also...

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Independent Reading Homework

I have always assigned independent reading, usually with the accountability of journals, logs, quizzes, book reports, AR, etc. Success rate has varied depending upon the school. At my current 70% AFDC...

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Free Instructional Vocabulary Resources

Vocabulary instruction is vitally important to advanced reading comprehension and writing. Words are the foundations of our language. Students learn the words they need to converse, read, and write in...

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Why Vocabulary Word Lists Don’t Work

Most of us would agree with reading researchers that vocabulary development is critically important to improving reading comprehension (e.g., Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Baumann, Kame‘enui, &...

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Research-Based Vocabulary Worksheets

The two most often-used methods of vocabulary instruction include passing out a vocabulary list to be memorized for the Friday quiz and pre-teaching a few vocabulary words prior to reading. Each method...

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The Ideal Vocabulary Worksheets

If you were to create the ideal vocabulary worksheets for your 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th grade students, what would you include? No doubt, the worksheets would be perfectly aligned to the Common Core...

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Context Clues in Reading and Writing

We teachers love a bargain. Especially a “two-for one” bargain. the two for one skill which can be used in more than one context. We are all about efficiency! Context clues strategies provide that...

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Don’t Teach Reading Comprehension

Don’t Teach Reading Comprehension Okay, I’ll admit it; the article title is a bit of an attention grabber. However, as an MA reading specialist and author of plenty of reading programs over the years,...

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How to Practice Reading Comprehension

Don’t Teach Reading Comprehension Well, I stirred up somewhat of a ruckus with my companion article titled “Don’t Teach Reading Comprehension” and I think I understand why. Admittedly, the hook is...

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How to Teach Greek and Latin Word Parts Vocabulary

How to Teach Greek and Latin Word Parts Earlier in my teaching career I taught SAT/ACT preparation courses on the side. No, not the math.  In checking out all of the SAT prep books I found page after...

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How to Teach Academic Language Vocabulary

How to Teach Academic Language It’s been a while (2009) since I’ve read the carefully-crafted Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards. Not light bedtime reading, but reading is the subject of...

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How to Teach Word Relationships Vocabulary

How to Teach Word Relationships In Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards, the authors discuss the importance of learning new vocabulary in the context of word relationships. To deeply...

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How to Teach Connotations: Shades of Meaning Vocabulary

How to Teach Connotations Shades of Meaning Some of our English words are quite imprecise. Whereas the Greeks have at least four words for love, we only have one. How crazy is it that we can say, “I...

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How to Teach Figures of Speech Vocabulary

How to Teach Figures of Speech “Walk through the door and into my room. Chill in your seat until I can take care of this business. I swear I feel like I’m casting all my pearls before swine,” said the...

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How to Teach Multiple Meaning Words Vocabulary

How to Teach Multiple Meaning Words From an old vaudeville act: “You drove me to drink!” her husband shouted. “No, you walked there yourself every night,” his wife responded. This mildly humorous...

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Books for Struggling Readers

Books for Struggling Readers As a reading specialist, I’ve had the opportunity to work with students at the full spectrum of age groups from preK to adult ed. My passion has always been to help...

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