Vocabulary exercises
Build linguistic strength and flexibility

Before you can assign students tasks that require them to use vocabulary they are learning to accomplish course objectives other than those related to English vocabulary, you need to help students learn new words well enough to:

• Recognize them

• Recall them

• Apply them on demand.

Achieving these three objectives does not assure that students will use this new vocabulary without prompting in writing and speaking, but you must meet them before you can proceed to the higher level learning tasks inherent in writing and speaking.

Tasks inherent in learning vocabulary

Before they add a new word to their recognition vocabulary, most students need to:

• Connect the new word to something they know already.

• See how the new word is used and defined in multiple contexts. The more of these you can draw from students' class materials, the better.

• Identify the new word's structural elements such as its roots, prefix, and suffix.

Any activities you use to accomplish those tasks we call vocabulary exercises.

Just as physical exercise builds body strength and flexibility in preparation for activity outside the gym, exercising their vocabulary builds students' linguistic strength and flexibility in preparation for literacy activities outside English class.

The trick to using exercises successfully is to use them in small doses, preferably without using workbooks, worksheets, or similar packaged products.

If you are wise, you will integrate vocabulary instruction into your entire curriculum. An integrated approach allows you to teach thoroughly without boring students with blatant repetition.

To help you in the task of integrating vocabulary instruction into your broader curriculum, in addition to the pages on this thread, shown below, you may want to also check the pages on analogy examples and analogy practice and the page of free middle school writing prompts that includes a prompt that focuses on an ELA vocabulary word: onomatopoeia.