35 Strategies for Developing Content Area Vocabulary by Brenda H Spencer

35 Strategies for Developing Content Area Vocabulary by Brenda H Spencer

Whether working with students in an upper elementary, middle school or high school classroom, teachers are responsible for helping students explore the complexities of vocabulary instruction. In 35 Strategies for Developing Content Area Vocabulary offers teachers in grades 4-12 concrete directives for addressing vocabulary instruction in content area lessons. They categorize their strategy presentation in four explicit ways; preparing to learn words, building word knowledge, appying word knowledge or encouraging word learning.  Teachers utilizing these strategies will become more precise in their instruction and better meet the needs of ALL their students including English Learners because student achievement is dependent on their mastery of the specialized vocabulary related to various content area disciplines and is highly correlated to their reading comprehension.

Andrea M. Guillaume is a Professor in the Department of Elementary and Bilingual Education at California State University, Fullerton. She began her active teaching journey as a public school teacher and continues that journey by working with preservice and practicing teachers at the university and in local schools. She writes numerous articles and books for teachers, exploring her professional interests in pedagogy, content area instruction, and teacher development.