Academic Vocabulary

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After a quick pause, the 4th grade teacher realized she kept saying the words paraphrase, summarize, and retell, but she had never taught the students these academic words. So she put the summarizing lesson on pause, created a quick three-way foldable, and said let's talk about these words.


 Two or three questions into asking students what they knew about these words, and she realized - they don't know these terms. Most students thought paraphrase meant a definition. Others misconceived summarize to be the same as a retell. This was a goldmine...and the students needed this 5 minutes of direct vocabulary instruction in order to understand the rest of the real lesson.

 Are you teaching academic vocabulary each week? Reviewing these words periodically to deepen student understanding? 

 Team Tom Waters tweeted today:

 The conversation isn't new. But indeed, academic vocabulary has a huge impact! 

 Read this post to see how academic vocabulary is essential for ensuring background knowledge for long-term student success. And here is a post on how vocabulary can be a very useful formative assessment!

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