Vocabulary Lesson Plans for Parents and School Teachers

Planning Vocabulary Lessons for Children

The Importance of Vocabulary Lessons

Vocabulary lessons can improve students' reading comprehension and test scores. The ability to learn new words isn't just important for reading, English and language arts. Vocabulary is a part of all aspects of education and, eventually, adulthood.

Learning vocabulary can be tedious for students at times because it often involves memorizing definitions. However, when you're teaching vocabulary, you may want to occasionally stray form the standard, memorization-based methods in order to be more effective.

Creating a Lesson Plan

There are many methods for creating effective vocabulary lesson plans. If you're a teacher, it depends on your personal style and your state's standards. As a parent at home, your lesson plans will likely to be based on a more casual outline.

Creating a lesson plan typically involves several steps. The amount of time that you have will be a major factor in determining how you'll present the material. First, determine the goal of the lesson. Set a number of objectives and an amount of time for each one, as well as a way to evaluate how well the lesson has been understood by your students or child. If you need further help, there are lesson plan generators available online that you can enter your vocabulary lesson into.

Teaching Word Parts

You can create vocabulary lesson plans using a list of roots, prefixes and suffixes. Once a child is aware of word parts, he or she can often determine the meaning of new, unfamiliar words using this knowledge. At this point, games often become very useful. For example, you can mix up a bunch of different word parts and have children create new words from them.

Puzzles, Games and Activities

A vocabulary word map can help your students or child work deeply with vocabulary words. By filling out a word map, students not only have to look up the definition, but they also have to come up with synonyms and antonyms and write a sentence using the word. You can allow your class to be imaginative when creating word maps so that they may explore word structure in a positive, fun way.

Your students or child can also practice vocabulary by completing word puzzles. Word puzzles, including crosswords, hangman and word searches, can help children learn new vocabulary. You can buy word puzzles from a variety of bookstores and education vendors. There are also many puzzles and games that you can make, or find for free online.