Fun and Effective Ways to Build Your Students' Vocabulary

Abstract

Understanding vocabulary words and how they relate to other ideas and concepts is a critical subskill that influences reading comprehension. Students with deficient vocabularies are likely to have difficulty comprehending written material. This article provides teachers of middle and high school students with empirically validated strategies and recommended activities for vocabulary instruction. Specifically, we discuss teaching vocabulary through drama, semantic mapping, video technology, the Keyword Method, and active student responding activities.