Academic Vocabulary Resources

This year teachers in U-46 will be working to implement academic vocabulary as a teaching tool. The value of using this technique has been documented in the ASCD document Preliminary Report on the 2004-05 Evaluation Study of the ASCD Program for Building Academic Vocabulary and Supplemental Report on the Effects of the ASCD Program for Building Academic Vocabulary on Students Classified as Eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch (FRL) and Students Classified and English Language Learners (ELL). As stated by Marzano (2005), the strongest action a teacher can take to ensure that students have the academic background knowledge to understand the content they will encounter is providing them with direct instruction on those terms. When students understand the terms, they can understand the information presented in class.

Teachers representative of all grade-levels and schools from across U-46 have met to revise the lists of essential academic vocabulary. Each school has been provided with an academic vocabulary notebook for every student. The task now is to implement the strategy, not as an additional project, but as a part of instruction.

To help teachers in this process resouces specific to academic vocabulary will be listed here.  Teachers at different grade levels will provide samples of their students work and how they use academic vocabulary in their rooms.

Web Resources

Tennessee Academic Vocabulary Web Site  - contains information on looking for descriptions, and a number of games and activities to support vocabulary work in reading/langauage arts, math, science and social studies at grade levels from K-8.
Activites/games include: PowerPoint Games, Word Game Boards and Excel Games.

Find Word Descriptions:
United Streaming - videos
HiBeam Encyclopedia
InfoPlease
Opentopia 
Dictionary - on-line dictionary 
Visuwords – an online graphical dictionary