Vocabulary Study Needs to have MULTIPLE parts. Most of the time, I see one or more missing in the academic program or scope and sequence. What's your plan for each of these?

Systematic: Systematic Vocabulary Instruction is just that. You plan for it. You make a specific time for it. You plan a specific place for it to “live” in student resources and notebooks. You plan a specific scope and sequence for students to learn throughout the year. Consider roots, affixes word origins significant to your content or grade level. Be sure to use the sight words and phrases. 

Systematic Vocabulary Instruction also includes specific instruction that’s not about the words themselves. It’s about the processes we use during reading to diffuse and develop new vocabulary. Context clues, of course. But it’s also about the stuff we do like skipping words we don’t know and coming back to them. It’s about building our strategic repertoire for figuring out what people are trying to say.It’s also about the resources we create or consider that help use learn the words. Think visual thesaurus. Don’t just think dictionary. 

Incidental: This stuff is just that. Incidental. It’s about words you encounter in specific contexts and texts. You’ll need a plan for this too. Consider word collections: What brings beauty and power to the text? What words are used well for the situation and help the reader visualize, feel, or hear the author’s message/scene. Sometimes, these are the words you frontload before a text because they are central to comprehension and don’t have enough contextual references to be understood without direct teaching or exposure.  

TEKS/STAAR: Yes. There are words on the STAAR that kids need to know. That helps them know what the questions are asking. First, you mine your TEKS for the verbs and nouns kids need to know to understand the concept.s Second, you go to www.lead4ward.com resources tab and download the academic vocabulary lists that have been mined from the assessments. 

Specifically, you probably also need to look at character traits and emotional vocabulary terms for this section. Kids don’t know these words and feelings. Sure, there’s questions on them on the STAAR test, but they need to be able to define this stuff for living life, too. 

Academic Vocabulary: You need four kinds of word groups here: classic academic terms,  thinking/cognition words, literary language words, and disciplinary literacy words. 

• Classic Academic Words: Avril Coxhead has a wonderful list of word families. I’d get ahold of that thing asap. 
• Thinking/Cognition Words: Blooms, DOK...basically any of the Taxonomies
• Literary Language Words for Naming, Craft, and Analysis and Rhetoric
• Disciplinary Literacy Terms specific to your domain