Selecting Vocabulary for Explicit Instruction
1. Identify a text or passage to be read by your students.
2. List all of the vocabulary that will likely be unfamiliar to your students, and classify each one according to tier.
3. Analyze the word list, using the following questions as a guide: (a) Which words are Tier 2 words? (b) Which Tier 2 words are the most necessary for comprehension of the text? (c) Does the reading selection contain other words (Tier 1 and/or Tier 3) that are needed for comprehension? If so, which ones?