Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

06.09.15 Active Practice: The Key to Vocabulary

We’ve just finished our chapter on vocabulary in Reading Reconsidered.  In it, we describe ways to  teach new words directly (Explicit Vocabulary Instruction) and ways to increase how much word knowledge students absorb from reading words in texts (Implicit Vocabulary Instruction).  The following is from our discussion of Explicit Vocabulary Instruction and talks about the key…


04.03.15 On Vocabulary: What is a ‘Tier One’ Word?

Bringing Words to Life is a landmark book for me and many other educators on the topic of vocabulary instruction.   It’s hard to say what the three most important ideas in it are because there are so many, but one of the most widely discussed in Beck, McKeown and Kucan’s discussion is how to choose which…