How to Make Vocabulary Practice More Meaningful in High School ELA

Vocabulary assignments can get painfully repetitive. Students look up the word, write the definition, use it in a sentence, take the quiz, and then forget the word by next Tuesday.

And listen, students do need to know what a word means. There is nothing wrong with starting with a dictionary definition, but I do not think that should be where vocabulary instruction ends.

If I actually want students to own a word, they need to do more with it than copy something from a dictionary. They need to explain it, use it, compare it to other words, make choices about it, and eventually create with it.

That is where Bloom’s Taxonomy becomes really useful.

Knowing the Definition Is Just the Beginning

The first level of my vocabulary packet is exactly what you would expect: students find the definition and identify the part of speech. That gives them the basic knowledge they need before they can do anything meaningful with the word. 

The next step asks students to rewrite those definitions in their own words. That may seem simple, but it immediately tells me more than a copied dictionary definition ever could.

A student can copy a definition without understanding it. If they can explain that same definition in their own language, I have a much better sense that the meaning is actually starting to stick.

Then Make Them Use the Word

Next comes application. Students use each vocabulary word in a sentence, which gives them a chance to show that they understand how the word actually functions in context. 

This is familiar vocabulary work, but here it is part of a progression instead of the entire assignment. Students have already encountered the formal definition and translated it into language they understand, so now they have to make the word work correctly on their own.

That is a much better test of whether they are actually learning the vocabulary.

Synonyms Are Not Actually Interchangeable

This is probably one of my favorite parts of the packet. At the analysis level, students use a thesaurus to find a similar word and then explain how the meanings are different. 

Students really need practice with this because a thesaurus is not just a menu of interchangeable words. Two words can be technically synonymous and still carry very different connotations, levels of formality, or intensity.

A replacement word might be more negative, more specific, more dramatic, or just completely wrong for the sentence. Understanding that two words are similar is useful, but understanding why a writer might choose one instead of the other is the kind of vocabulary knowledge that actually transfers into reading and writing.

Let Students Create Something 

By the time students reach synthesis, they are no longer just completing traditional vocabulary exercises. They create a poem, song, or advertisement using at least half of their vocabulary words, and they have to include enough context that someone unfamiliar with the list could still understand what the words mean. 

I like this because students have to think about meaning in context instead of just dropping vocabulary words into random sentences. They need to make choices about how the words fit together and how those choices help communicate something to a reader.

Yes, they can absolutely try to cram a bunch of vocabulary words into something ridiculous. But if the context has to make the meaning clear, they still have to understand the words well enough to make it work.

Finally, Make Them Evaluate Their Own Choices

At the final level, students go back to the sentences they wrote earlier and reconsider their word choices. They decide whether one of the synonyms they found, or another word entirely, would work better and explain why they would or would not make the change. 

This is the part I especially like because vocabulary instruction starts turning into writing instruction. Students are no longer just asking whether a word is technically correct.

They are asking whether it is the best word.

That is a very different question, and it is one I want students asking every time they write.

Vocabulary Should Build Somewhere

This is really the idea behind the whole packet. Vocabulary practice should not feel like six different ways to prove that students copied a definition.

Each step should ask a little more of them. Students first learn the word, then explain it, use it, compare it, create with it, and finally evaluate their own choices.

That progression is what makes the work feel purposeful instead of repetitive. The goal is not for students to temporarily memorize ten words because there is a quiz coming.

The goal is for those words to become part of the language they can actually use.

Want a Vocabulary Assignment That Goes Beyond Definitions?

My Bloom’s Taxonomy Vocabulary Packet is designed to work with any vocabulary list, so you can use it with a novel, short story, nonfiction unit, content-area vocabulary, or your own weekly word lists.

Students move through six levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, beginning with definitions and parts of speech and eventually analyzing word relationships, creating with their vocabulary, and evaluating their own word choices. 

[Shop the Bloom’s Taxonomy Vocabulary Packet here.]

If students are going to spend time learning vocabulary, I want them to do more than copy it out of a dictionary.

I want them to actually use it.