Direct and Multifaceted Approaches to Teach Important Vocabulary

In this study a fourth grade social studies class, a fifth grade science class and a university Romanian Literature class all worked with the acquisition of vocabulary in their content areas. The teachers all implemented two sets of lessons/activities in which they first imbedded vocabulary teaching within the process of having the students learn their curriculum and then pre taught important vocabulary prior to their formal lessons. In all three cases the students test scores rose significantly when the vocabulary was explicitly pre taught in a multifaceted fashion. The elementary teachers also looked at student attitudes and self-efficacy scores to determine whether or not students gained in the affective domain. The results from the attitude and self- efficacy inventories were mixed. The fourth grade social studies students appeared to benefit both in more positive attitudes toward their teacher, each other and the curriculum. The fifth grade science students did not appear to have significant changes in either their attitudes or self-efficacy. It is clear from this and other research that teaching important vocabulary explicitly and in multi-sensory and multi-faceted ways in important for all teachers to consider.