The Words
Students Need
Whole-school, context-rich vocabulary instruction is an
intervention that boosts middle school students’
reading comprehension.
Joshua F. Lawrence, Claire White, and Catherine E. Snow
When students enter middle school, they encounter increasingly difficult text- books and instructional materials. Many students begin to struggle with reading comprehension because they lack the
vocabulary to understand academic text (Buly & Valencia,
2002; Snow, Porche, Tabors, & Harris, 2007). Not surprisingly, the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development (2000) advocates direct vocabulary instruction
as an effective instructional method for enhancing students’
reading comprehension.
In our work with schools to help them improve student
literacy, we have observed that middle school teachers do
not usually teach vocabulary. The vocabulary instruction that
does exist is fragmented among content areas, and (perhaps
as a result), middle school students often find textbooks and
other academic materials unengaging. A system of cross-content, whole-school vocabulary instruction can result in
better reading comprehension. Here is what the research says
about the basic components of such a system.
Choose the Right Words
When a teaching team designs and implements a program
of whole-school vocabulary instruction, its most important
decision is which vocabulary words to teach. Beck, McKeown,
and Kucan (2002) suggest teaching not the common words
that all students are likely to know or the words that students
are only likely to encounter in texts for one content area, but
rather general academic words. Unfortunately, the category of
general academic words has rather fuzzy boundaries.
