To ensure explicit vocabulary instruction whenplanning lessons for my culturally diverse pre-kindergarten-age students, I will make use of instructional strategies that promote age-appropriate explanations and the provision of contextual information. Firstly, I will structure vocabulary acquisition activities in a way to introduce children to the phenomenon of homonyms. As part of group reading activities, I will find words with multiple meanings in each text and use sentences and vocabulary cards to illustrate how their meanings depend on the context.
My students will be encouraged to match different statements, for instance, “cranes are large birds with long legs” or “cranes are used in construction to lift very heavy objects,” with relevant cards with words and pictures. Secondly, within the frame of activities that promote print awareness, I will make sure to provide learner-friendly explanations for each vocabulary unit of interest. Considering my students’ age-specific developmental characteristics, such definitions should operate as concrete rather than abstract nouns and be tied to their everyday experiences and background knowledge about the world.
Moreover, my strategies will be focused on strengthening children’s understanding of vocabulary through active involvement, including play-based activities. Word-sorting games are prominent in helping young students to gain a basic understanding of different parts of speech and their characteristics. I will use such activities during vocabulary learning to enable students to make intuitively correct guesses concerning the functions of new words that they encounter. Apart from sorting activities with cards, my students will be offered to participate in the game of charades and transform their associations with the words of interest, for instance, the names of animals, into short performances without spoken words. Considering this, games and illustrative printed materials will be helpful in ensuring explicit and effective vocabulary instruction.