Content area vocabulary learning

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2014). Content area vocabulary learning. The Reading Teacher, 67(8), 594-599.


Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey are on my current list of “go-to” authors, especially when it comes to making sense of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and figuring out how to design literacy instruction that makes sense as well as addresses the CCSS.

This concise article distills several basic principles for facilitating learners’ vocabulary development. Fisher and Frey look at four components that they deem essential for vocabulary learning: 1) wide reading, 2) selecting words and phrases to teach, 3) modeling word solving, and 4) using words in discussion. Throughout the article, Fisher and Frey make linkages to the CCSS, referring to specific standards that relate to vocabulary, both explicitly and implicitly. As a teacher educator, I have been particularly working with teacher candidates on “unpacking” the CCSS and peeling back the layers of meaning found within them. That is not always easy with standards that attempt to get at higher learning levels, and it was refreshing and helpful for me to see Fisher and Frey getting at the same kinds of things I am working on with teacher candidates. For example, I have been interested and excited by the Speaking and Listening standards, and have been trying to show the possibilities that those open up; Fisher and Frey speak to how the Speaking and Listening standards can link up with giving students opportunities to use new vocabulary. I believe that all aspects of literacy are intertwined and interrelated, and that is also the message I hear in this article.

The article is concise, and has its limitations because of that, but Fisher and Frey get a lot said in five pages, and the reader can access much more of their work in various ways. I recently posted a previous blog entry on one of their articles that deals mainly with the complex but important teaching task of selecting vocabulary to teach (search under the Vocabulary heading under All Topics). I recommend the article referenced there. I also highly recommend visiting Fisher and Frey’s YouTube site. There, you can watch videos that show how the strategies recommended in the article actually look and sound in classrooms. If the videos there intrigue you, as they did me, then you will want to order some of Fisher and Frey's books. I’ve found them well-grounded and meaningful, while also practical and realistic.

I plan to use this article as a jumping-off place with the teachers and teacher candidates I work with. It is short enough to use in a class, workshop, or study group, but is filled with enough information to stimulate discussion and provide a starting point for additional research and reflection, and then maybe lead to the designing and implementing of vocabulary instruction that goes beyond the old models that we have long known were ineffective for vocabulary learning but that we persistently still see in many classrooms (i.e., assigning lists of words, copying definitions, and writing single decontextualized sentences with them). Once teachers see the possibilities of engaging learners with vocabulary, we may see some good changes in vocabulary teaching and learning.