Listen to my latest podcast episode:

Building Academic Vocabulary: Are We Leaving Too Much to Chance?

Click Play to Listen

When was the last time you really thought about how you’re building academic vocabulary in your classroom?

Not how you teach vocabulary or what activities you use, but how those particular words ended up in front of your students.

If you’re like a lot of ELA teachers, vocabulary is probably tied to whatever you’re reading. You’re working through a novel, and there are a handful of words students need to know. Or maybe your district curriculum includes a vocabulary activity with each reading selection. The words are already chosen, the activity is ready to go, and you can check vocabulary off your lesson plan.

And I get it. With everything we’re expected to teach, having something already prepared is one less decision to make.

But are we doing enough to help students build the kind of vocabulary they’ll need beyond the story or article we’re teaching?

Because building academic vocabulary is about more than understanding the words in the current reading assignment.

Are We Teaching Vocabulary or Just the Words in Our Reading?

I want to be clear that I have nothing against teaching vocabulary from a novel or short story. If students need to understand certain words to make sense of what they’re reading, of course we should teach those words.

But here’s what I wonder.

When our curriculum provides a list of vocabulary words, do we ever stop to consider why those particular words were chosen?

Maybe they’re essential to understanding the story. Maybe they’re unfamiliar words that students aren’t likely to encounter again. Or maybe they’re academic words that students will see in other classes and reading selections.

Those are three different reasons for selecting vocabulary.

Consider the reading students are expected to do throughout their school day. They’re encountering informational articles in ELA, historical documents in social studies, and increasingly complex explanations in science. The vocabulary they need to understand isn’t limited to the words that appear in their current novel.

Yet it’s easy for our vocabulary instruction to become tied so closely to individual reading selections that we lose sight of the bigger goal.

We’re not just helping students understand one text. We’re trying to help them become readers who can approach unfamiliar texts with greater confidence and understanding.

And that requires us to think about vocabulary beyond the next reading assignment.

Building Academic Vocabulary Is Part of Building Stronger Readers

Here’s something I’ve noticed in conversations with some of my student teachers. We spend a lot of time discussing students who struggle with reading comprehension, and vocabulary often comes up as part of that conversation. Sometimes students can read (decode) every word in a passage, but they still can’t explain what they’ve read.

It’s tempting to immediately think about comprehension strategies. Maybe they need more practice identifying the main idea or making inferences. And sometimes they do. But what if part of the problem is that they simply don’t understand enough of the language in the passage?

Think about what happens when you’re reading something outside your own area of expertise. You might recognize most of the words, but if you’re unfamiliar with the terminology, understanding the information takes a lot more effort. Our students experience that, too. As they move through middle and high school, they’re expected to read texts that contain more sophisticated language and increasingly complex ideas. If their vocabulary knowledge isn’t growing alongside those expectations, reading becomes more difficult.

That’s why I don’t think we can treat vocabulary as something separate from reading comprehension. The two are connected. The more language students understand, the better equipped they are to make sense of what they’re reading. That doesn’t eliminate every reading challenge, but it gives them an important foundation to build on.

Does Vocabulary Have a Regular Place in Your Classroom?

I think this is where things can get a little uncomfortable, because most of us would agree that vocabulary matters. But agreeing that something is important and consistently making time for it are two different things.

And classroom time is always in short supply. We’ve got novels to finish, writing assignments to teach, standards to cover, and assessments to prepare for. Sometimes vocabulary instruction gets pushed aside because there are other things demanding our attention.

Or maybe we feel like we’re covering vocabulary because students are completing the activities included with our curriculum.

But are those activities helping students build their vocabulary over time, or are they simply helping students learn a few words for the current reading?

I think that’s a question worth asking.

This is exactly what I’m talking about in this week’s episode of the Middle School Cafe podcast. I’m looking at how we can be more intentional about the vocabulary we’re teaching without going back to those old memorize-and-test vocabulary lists. We’ll talk about creating manageable routines, helping students revisit words they’ve already learned, and finding opportunities for students to actually use that vocabulary in their writing and classroom conversations.

Because the goal isn’t just for students to recognize a word on a vocabulary worksheet. We want them to understand it well enough to recognize and use it beyond that one lesson.

What Are We Really Hoping Students Learn?

I think it’s easy to get caught up in what students can demonstrate at the end of a vocabulary lesson. Can they define the words? Can they identify the correct meaning? Can they complete the activity successfully? Those things matter, but they’re not the ultimate goal. What I really want is for students to encounter a word in a new reading selection and recognize it. I want them to understand enough of the language that they can focus on the ideas in the text rather than getting stuck trying to figure out what everything means.

And yes, I’d love to see them become comfortable using some of those words in their own writing and conversations, too. But that kind of understanding takes more than introducing a word and checking it off our lesson plan.

It takes intentional instruction, consistent exposure, and time. We want students to develop vocabulary knowledge they can carry from one reading experience to another, rather than learning words for a particular assignment and then moving on.

Want to give this some more thought? Head back to the top of the blog and push play on this week’s episode!

Resources you may find helpful:

Keep listening:

Hello everyone! Welcome back to the Middle School Cafe podcast!
Okay, before jumping into today’s topic, can we just take a moment to celebrate the fact that Halloween is on a Saturday this year? If you’ve been teaching for any length of time, you know what a gift that is!
Now, that doesn’t mean we’re getting off easy. We’ve still got the week leading up to Halloween, and depending on your school, that might mean spirit days, costumes, and a whole lot of excitement about candy and everything else that comes with Halloween.
If you know me, you know I’m all about embracing the chaos rather than trying to control it.
So when we’ve got a week like this coming up, I think it’s a great opportunity to bring a little of that excitement into what we’re doing in ELA. Maybe it’s reading a Halloween-themed short story, or getting students up and moving with an academic scavenger hunt. We’re still practicing important skills, but we’re also recognizing that our students are excited about something, and that’s okay! School should be fun.
If you’re still figuring out what you’re doing next week, I’ve got two Halloween blog posts with some ideas you might want to try. I’ll link those in the show notes so you can take a look.
Today we’re switching gears a little bit. We normally talk about reading, and we still are, but there’s an aspect of reading we haven’t talked about in over a year, and that’s vocabulary.
More specifically, why is it that our students can demonstrate they know a vocabulary word, but then never seem to actually use it?
Think about it. You’ve spent time introducing a new word. Students have practiced with it, they’ve seen it in sentences, and when you ask them what it means, they can tell you the definition. They know the word!
But then you read their writing, or you listen to them talking about something they’ve read, and they’re using the same familiar words they’ve always used.
I don’t think it’s necessarily because they haven’t learned the vocabulary. I think there’s a disconnect between knowing a word when someone puts it in front of you, being able to define it, and being comfortable enough with that word to use it in their own conversations or writing.
So today I want to talk about how we can help students make that connection. Not by adding more vocabulary worksheets or creating another complicated routine, but by being a little more intentional about the words we’re teaching and how we’re giving students opportunities to use them.
One of the things I think we need to consider is where our vocabulary words are coming from.
For a lot of us, vocabulary instruction is connected to whatever we’re reading. Maybe you’re teaching a novel, and there are several words students need to understand. Or maybe you’re using an article or a short story from your district curriculum, and there’s a vocabulary activity that goes along with it.
And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. We want students to understand what they’re reading, and sometimes that means stopping to introduce words that are important to the text.
But I think we also need to ask ourselves whether that’s enough.
Here’s the problem. We don’t always know how those vocabulary words were selected. Were they chosen because they’re important for understanding that particular story? Were they selected because they’re words students are likely to encounter again? Or are they simply unfamiliar words that happen to appear in the passage?
Those are different purposes.
And while understanding the vocabulary in a particular story is important, we also want students developing a broader vocabulary that will help them as they move through middle school, into high school, and beyond.
We want them to recognize words they’ll encounter in informational texts, historical documents, science readings, and all kinds of academic writing.
So I think it’s perfectly okay—and actually really important—to intentionally select grade-level vocabulary words to teach, even when those words aren’t coming directly from the literature we’re currently reading.
Now, I know that might raise a few eyebrows, especially if you’re working with a district curriculum that already includes vocabulary instruction.
And I’m certainly not suggesting that you ignore your curriculum or stop teaching the words students need to understand their reading.
But I do think it’s worth looking at what your curriculum is providing and asking whether students are getting consistent exposure to the kinds of academic vocabulary they’ll need across different texts and subjects.
And just as important, what happens to those words after students finish the reading?
Do they ever see them again? Are they encouraged to use them? Or do we move on to the next story and the next set of words?
Because that’s where I think we sometimes miss an opportunity.
The reason I feel so strongly about this really comes back to reading comprehension.
As ELA teachers, we’re trying to help students become stronger readers. We want them to be able to pick up grade-level texts, understand what they’re reading, think critically about the information, and make connections.
But vocabulary plays a pretty significant role in whether students can do that.
Think about a student who’s reading an informational article. They might be able to decode every word on the page, but if they don’t understand several of the academic words being used, they’re going to have a much harder time making sense of the text.
And that becomes even more important as students move through school and the language in their reading becomes more complex.
This is something I see with my student teachers, too. We talk quite a bit about the limited vocabulary students have and how that affects their ability to understand what they are reading.
I think sometimes we’re so focused on the particular text we’re teaching that we forget vocabulary development is something bigger than that one lesson or story.
We’re not just teaching words so students can understand today’s short story.
We’re helping them develop the knowledge they’ll need for the next text, the next unit, and the next grade level.
And that’s why I think vocabulary deserves a consistent place in our instruction.
Now, when I start talking about intentionally selecting vocabulary words, I know some of you are old enough to remember those old vocabulary lists.
You know the ones. Fifteen or twenty words on Monday, memorize the definitions, take a test on Friday, and then start all over again the next week.
I don’t think any of us are looking to bring that back!
But here’s something I think is worth remembering. There was a reason teachers were intentionally selecting words for students to learn. We wanted to expand their vocabulary.
Where we fell short was in what happened after we introduced those words. The problem was that so much of the instruction depended on memorization, passing a test and then moving on.
Students could remember the definitions long enough to pass the test, but that didn’t mean they could recognize the words in different contexts or use them appropriately in their own writing.
That doesn’t mean we need to throw out the idea of intentionally teaching vocabulary. We just need to be more thoughtful about what that instruction looks like.
We still want students learning new vocabulary words on a regular basis. We just want to make sure they’re doing more than memorizing definitions. We want them to understand how those words are used and have opportunities to come back to them throughout the year.
And this is where I really want to encourage you to find something manageable that works in your classroom.
Maybe that’s introducing a word a day. Maybe it’s selecting five words for the week and spending a few minutes working with them throughout the week. Maybe you have a short vocabulary warm-up routine built into your schedule.
There isn’t one particular routine I’m advocating for.
What I am advocating for is having a plan.
Because when vocabulary instruction only happens when we happen to come across an unfamiliar word, we’re leaving a lot of our students’ vocabulary development to chance.
And I think we can do better than that without making it complicated.
The important part is that students are seeing words in context. Not just a word on one side of the page and a definition on the other. Like many of the lists we used to use.
They need to see how a word is being used in a sentence. They need to encounter it in a paragraph. They need opportunities to think about which word makes sense in a particular situation and why.
And they need to work with those words more than once.
If you don’t already have a regular vocabulary routine in place, I do have some done-for-you Vocabulary in Context activities for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade that you could take a look at. They’re designed to give students consistent practice with grade-level vocabulary in context, and I’ll link them in the show notes.
Now, something else we need to think about is what happens to those words once the vocabulary activity is finished. Are students actually using them, or are they working with them for a week and then forgetting about them?
Let’s go back to the question we started with. Why aren’t students using the vocabulary words they’ve learned?
I think part of the reason is that we’ve spent time teaching students what the words mean, but we haven’t always given them opportunities to take ownership of those words. We’ve introduced the vocabulary, they’ve practiced identifying words in context, and they may even be able to explain what those words mean.
But then when it’s time to write, we expect students to remember those words, recognize when they would be useful, and use them correctly in their own writing. That’s a pretty big expectation, especially when they’re much more comfortable using the same familiar words they’ve been using for years.
So how do we help students get to the point where they’re actually using the vocabulary they’ve learned? I think one of the easiest ways is to start incorporating those words into their regular writing assignments.
Think about the writing students are already doing in our ELA classes. Maybe it’s a weekly reading reflection, a response to an article, or a paragraph explaining their thinking about something they’ve read. These are all opportunities to bring back vocabulary students have previously studied.
Let’s say you’ve introduced five or six vocabulary words over the past couple of weeks, and your students are getting ready to write a reading reflection. Before they begin, put those words back in front of them. Spend a minute reviewing their meanings, maybe talk about how a couple of them could be used, and then ask students to incorporate three of those words into their reflection.
And you can certainly change this up depending on what your students are ready for. Maybe instead of asking them to use three words from a short list, you give them a larger collection of vocabulary they’ve learned and let them choose which words fit their writing.
Now, this might mean adding a few extra minutes to your lesson, but I think those minutes are well spent. You’re giving students an opportunity to recall vocabulary they’ve already learned and practice using it in a meaningful way. Every time they come back to those words, they’re strengthening their understanding and making it easier to remember and use them in the future. All without having to pull out another vocabulary worksheet just for review.
Another way we can help students become more comfortable with vocabulary is by paying attention to the vocabulary we’re using in our instruction.
Think about the directions you give students or the conversations you’re having during a lesson. Are there opportunities to use some of those vocabulary words you’ve been teaching? Maybe you’re explaining an assignment and can naturally work in a word students have studied. Or maybe you’re leading a discussion and can bring one of those words into the conversation.
This is something I encourage my student teachers to think about when they’re planning lessons. We spend a lot of time thinking about what we want students to learn, but I also want them to consider the language they’re modeling. If we’re intentionally using academic vocabulary in our own conversations with students, we’re giving them more opportunities to hear those words used naturally in context.
As we wrap up today, I want to bring us back to why we’re teaching vocabulary in the first place. We want our students to become stronger readers, and having a solid understanding of grade-level vocabulary is an important part of making that happen.
I want to encourage you to take a look at how vocabulary instruction fits into your class. Are you intentionally introducing grade-level vocabulary, or are you relying on the words that happen to be included in your curriculum? Do you have a regular routine for building vocabulary, or is it something that happens when you have a little extra time?
And what about after students have learned new words? Are you giving them opportunities to revisit the vocabulary, recognize it in different contexts, and begin using it in their own writing and discussions?
I think these are important questions for us to consider because vocabulary development doesn’t happen in a single lesson or even over the course of a week. We want students to continue building their vocabulary throughout the school year so they’re better prepared to understand the increasingly complex texts we’re asking them to read.
That doesn’t mean you need to make huge changes to what you’re doing. Maybe it’s establishing a regular vocabulary routine, being more intentional about the words you’re introducing, or finding ways to bring previously learned vocabulary back into your lessons. The important thing is that we’re making vocabulary development a consistent part of helping students become stronger readers.
If you’d like some additional ideas for teaching vocabulary, I have two earlier episodes you might want to check out. Episodes 47 and 48 are both about teaching vocabulary with purpose, and I’ll link those in the show notes.
Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you have a great week, and with Halloween coming up, remember to have a little fun with your students!
I’ll see you next time.