The authors develop the concept of teaching vocabulary for application (TVA) as a component of comprehensive vocabulary instruction. TVA is instruction that focuses on students' skillful application of small sets of words within academic tasks, such as text analysis and writing. The authors discuss how this instruction, with its extended focus on…

In this strategy, students individually select and record 10 important words on self-adhesive notes as they read a text. Then students build a group bar graph displaying their choices, write a sentence that summarizes the content, and then respond to prompts that ask them to think about words in powerful ways. Several prompts are suggested, each…