Boost Your Students’ Vocabulary Mastery with Essential Tier 2 Words
Do you have middle school students struggling with vocabulary? This is a common theme amongst my middle schoolers that receive speech and language therapy. Although we can’t be by their side in every class to help define unknown words, we CAN help them develop strategies and confidence around commonly used words in the academic world.
Tier 2 vocabulary words are high-frequency words that are often seen in a variety of subject matter. These words are used in textbooks, test questions, and classroom discussions. Helping our students learn these Tier 2 words gives us more ‘bang for our buck’ when it comes to their comprehension, expression, and self confidence inside and outside of the classroom.
How to target
In my speech and language sessions, I make sure to give these high-frequency words the attention they deserve. To help spot these common Tier 2 words, I think about how they fall between Tier 1 and Tier 3 words. Tier 1 words refer to more basic, everyday vocabulary such as notebook, happy, and run; Tier 3 words refer to specialized, subject-specific vocabulary such as ecosystem and photosynthesis.
Tier 2 words are those frequent, but tricky words that pop up in most academic subjects. This includes words like infer, evaluate, and analyze. When I come across them in a session, I chat about them at length with my students. Together, we complete a few quick vocabulary activities to make sure they understand what they are reading or answering. With my dry erase board handy, I walk them through some of the activities below:
If we are completing an activity with a small reading passage, I first have my students highlight the Tier 2 word we want to target.
“The class was able to infer that the special guest was a local firefighter based on the teacher’s introduction.”
2. I ask students to use their background knowledge or context clues from the sentence/passage to figure out a possible meeting.
3. We double check our definitions using an online dictionary or Youtube video (for our visual learners!).
Infer: Verb; deduce or conclude information from evidence and reasoning.
4. Next, I have students come up with word associations - what do they think of when they hear infer? What are some connections they can make to help them remember the meaning of this word? Sometimes we look up pictures or videos to give us ideas of when/where we might see this word.
One student associated “infer” with “info”. Because the words have similar letters and length, she wanted to remember the phrase, “I need more info before I can infer!”
One student drew a magnifying glass to remember that he’s “looking for evidence.”
5. Lastly, I have students create their own sentence using the target word.
Plan your lesson
Learning new words in context is a great way to build vocabulary. Sometimes, you might want a more intentional plan around teaching Tier 2 vocabulary, so I created a digital and print resource that targets 24 Tier 2 words!
This product contains an overview of the importance of Tier 2 words, along with a pre and post test of targeted vocabulary! Each page targets one Tier 2 word with multiple activities including: using context clues, creating associations, formulating sentences, and additional discussion questions!
One teacher rated this product 5/5 and stated, “I am so happy with this purchase! I target 1 word per week and there are so many activities included for each word creating review opportunities throughout the week!
There are many different ways to target these Tier 2 words in your 1:1, small group, and whole classroom lessons. How are you going to target Tier 2 vocabulary this week?
