Vocabulary skills are essential to reading comprehension. It also has a great impact on a student's feeling about the reading experience as a whole. Giving the students the skills they need to read and understand needs to be a major focus in our instruction. What can you do to set your students up for success to become good readers?
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1. Before reading a passage or story-provide students with a list of new words that they will come across. Have the students read the words aloud. You read it aloud if it is mispronounced and have students repeat it correctly. Do parts of the word hint at what the word may mean?
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2. Provide a sentence including the new word. Does the sentence hint at the meaning of the word? Can the student make an educated guess as to what the word means? (For younger students-can the illustration help you figure out what the word may mean?)
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3. After giving students the list of new words-have students add the unknown or "new" words into a personal dictionary. They can look up the meaning of the words and list the definition in their own personal dictionary. (Younger students can draw an illustration as a guide.) Be sure to come back to these words and reinforce them.
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4. Skip the word in reading. If students cannot decode or read it-have them skip it. They can continue to read the text and see if the rest of it is understood. Address the unknown word after reading is complete.
*Students need to be taught the skills of decoding as they are learning to read. For students who already know how to read-it is good practice to teach these strategies (and post) outside of the reading activity. They can use it as a reference and a reminder.
