Get All “Jazzed Up” for Vocabulary Instruction: Strategies That Engage

Vocabulary instruction is a key component of reading comprehension but is often not addressed sufficiently in classrooms. The authors worked with a team of fifth-grade teachers in professional development targeted to learning instructional strategies for developing students' vocabularies. In this article, the authors share two strategies that the teachers said their students found most engaging: the Graffiti Wall and the Picture Word Wall. Both strategies were the teachers' adaptations of strategies shared with them and were built on best practices from literacy research, including explicit vocabulary instruction, a gradual release of responsibility, using pictures to support retention, ongoing review, word learning strategies, universal participation and accountability, encouraging student autonomy, using challenging and interesting texts, and fostering collaboration. This article describes the two strategies so that any teacher could try them tomorrow.