The Best Strategies for Vocabulary Lessons In 2nd Grade
It is important for us to teach vocabulary lessons all year, every year until… forever? Let’s get started!
Have you ever been in an adult conversation and you don’t know what a word someone said means? How often do you ask them to clarify it and explain rather than just nodding and looking up the word later? I am in a group with many people who often worry that they will look stupid, so I figure it out the best I can and Google it later!
We expect our students to look for new vocabulary all the time, so we need to do that as adults too! We need to create an environment in our classroom (and in our lives) that we celebrate not knowing a word and learning something new by identifying that unknown word with a vocabulary strategy!
Introducing Vocabulary Lessons
If you have been around here for a while, you know my love of connecting reading strategies to real life situations. The reading strategy of identifying and defining vocabulary is an easier one to think of a personal example, but just as meaningful for your students. I usually start my vocabulary lessons with an example of a recent situation where I did not know what a word meant and needed to figure out the definition to understand.
This leads into my emphasis on how we will CELEBRATE finding new words in our classroom! There are tons of ways to do this!
Ways to emphasize the FUN and GOOD in finding new/ unknown words:
- write the words on a “new vocabulary” wall
- each student writes on a new words paper in folder (get to share every so often)
- add a sticker to a chart whenever a new word is found or defined
- have parents send in pictures of kids with a new word they found outside of school
- sing/ clap a class new word cheer whenever is identified – “Hey have you heard? We found a new word!”
Have fun with it and choose what fits your class personality!
Scaffolding Vocabulary Lessons to Build Confidence
- I start my vocabulary lessons with modeling think alouds of noticing a new words that I am not sure what it means. As part of that interactive shared reading, students practice monitoring their understanding and identifying new words. Then, I provide the definition and we discuss how knowing the definition helps our understanding of the text. This builds their confidence in finding new words and wanting to clarify their meaning.
- Next, I model one vocabulary strategy at time in my think alouds. The main definition solving strategies that I focus on in 2nd grade are:
- associating the word with a familiar word
- context clues
- research- ask someone, use google, look it up in a dictionary
It is important to pick appropriate mentor texts to model the vocabulary strategy that you want to focus on! I have book suggestions and tips for how to do that over on this blog post.
My vocabulary resource has everything you need to get started planning these types of interactive vocabulary lessons with ANY book!
3. Once students are getting confident in participating in the shared reading discussions using the vocabulary strategies. Your vocabulary lessons should shift to more independent practice.
I use both photograph and short paragraph task cards to start my students independently finding and defining new words.
The photograph task cards are specifically designed for students to practice understanding that all words can be defined. They are asked to identify as many words as they can about what it in the picture, then pick some to define. It is more challenging than they realize to think of the definition for everyday objects like a door! I found that this vocabulary activity deepens students understanding of what a definition truly is and how it connects to the word.
There are many ways to structure your vocabulary lessons! I hope that this helps you with ideas and activities for how to teach vocabulary strategies to your primary class!
Read more about how I teach other non- fiction reading strategies!
- main idea
- determining importance
- text structures
- text features
