Metacognitive Vocabulary Instruction:
Helping Children Think About Word Meanings
Kathryn L. Bauserman, Susan E. Israel, and Cathy Collins Block
On average, school-age students gain vocabulary at a rate of about 3,000 words per year through reading, oral language, and listening to auditory and visual media (Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2002; Stahl, 2003). But not all students learn vocabulary words at the same rate. By second grade the word knowledge gap between high and low students was found to be about 3,900 words (Biemiller & Slomin, 2001). This figure can be extrapolated to a difference of almost 20,000 known words between good and less able seventh graders. Why is a varied and rich vocabulary important for students? Students’ struggles with word meanings often cause breakdowns in comprehension. They try familiar strategies such as rereading, using context, and reading to the end, but they still fail to understand word meanings.
What can classroom teachers do to help students learn new word meanings?
... ... ...