The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) recently announced new research that indicates there is a strong correlation between a student's ability to use the vocabulary associated with a discipline and their academic achievement in a given subject area. The research shows that students who participated in a program aimed at building academic vocabulary performed significantly better on assessments targeting comprehension of new reading materials in the areas of science, math, and general literacy. The study cites several best practices for building vocabulary. They are:

• Describe, explain, and provide examples of each new term.
• Have students practice the above in their own words.
• Have students draw or symbolize new terms.
• Provide activities to reinforce knowledge of terms.
• Promote student discussion of new terms.
• Involve students in games that use the new terms.

If you are looking for a way to easily accomplish the above, take a look at our Vocabulary A-Z website (www.vocabularya-z.com). It allows you to build your own customized vocabulary lessons with downloadable resources that implement the six characteristics of good vocabulary instruction described above. There are enough resources for more than a week of instruction on each and every vocabulary list you build. And you can build thousands of lessons. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, you can build a few lessons to try out for free.