There are many things I loved about being a high school English language arts teacher, but one of my secret passions was teaching students about the history of words. If I could change careers and become an etymologist (someone who studies where words come from and how they change over time), that’s probably what I’d do.
Every year, at least one student gave me a book about etymology as an end‑of‑year gift. When I’d ask why, they’d usually say something like, “Because it’s clear you really love this stuff.” So much for pretending my fascination with word origins was a secret.
For me, this passion for word meanings was more than just a hobby. It became a core part of how I approached reading instruction. Over time, I realized that when students are immersed in a complex, grade-level text, teaching them how words work—how they’re constructed, how they evolve, and how they connect—helps build vocabulary and strengthen reading comprehension. I also learned that teaching morphology, or how word parts combine to create meaning, is an effective way to help students unlock meaning in those same complex texts.
What the research says about building students’ vocabulary
Fortunately, a strong body of research supports the idea that teaching students how words work also improves their reading comprehension. Reading researcher Michael Graves identifies four key approaches to building students’ vocabulary, with each one contributing in a meaningful way to future reading success:
- Create a culture of curiosity about words
- Teach word-solving strategies
- Strategically teach individual words
- Engage in wide reading
Where possible, Graves suggests using all four approaches to instruction. Building students’ vocabulary works best when instruction is integrated, intentional, and connected to real reading.
Let’s break the four approaches down before I share some vocabulary-building tips you can try in upper elementary grades and with middle and high schoolers.
Create a culture of curiosity about words
Graves emphasizes that vocabulary learning thrives in classrooms where students are encouraged to wonder about language. Beyond teaching students how words work, this type of instruction includes:
- Integrating engagement and motivation strategies
- Addressing student anxiety, especially among multilingual learners
- Providing practice through discussion, word play, and meaningful application
Vocabulary instruction is far more than giving students a list of words to memorize. It’s about developing a mindset that encourages students to examine word patterns, connections, and possibilities for meaning. As Graves notes, it’s really about fostering word consciousness—the habit of noticing, wondering about, and playing with words in everyday reading and conversation.
Teach word‑solving strategies
Teaching students word-solving strategies makes my etymology‑loving heart beat a little faster. That’s because these strategies give students multiple ways of figuring out what words mean. Some of my favorites include:
- Understanding word parts (morphology)
- Exploring multiple meanings
- Using context clues
- Making word webs to show connections
- Using reference materials
- Recognizing and analyzing figurative language
- Examining word relationships
- Exploring nuances in word meanings
Studying morphology is an especially important strategy because students who understand the building blocks of language are better able to unlock unfamiliar words independently.
Strategically teach individual words
Research also shows that embedding vocabulary instruction in meaningful contexts gives students many more opportunities to process words deeply, connect them to concepts, and revisit them over time. This method also gives students greater access to complex texts. According to the research, it’s much easier to do this if your school uses a knowledge‑building curriculum. That’s because vocabulary acquisition and content knowledge are mutually reinforcing: When students build content knowledge, they build vocabulary. And when they build vocabulary, they can access content knowledge more easily.
Emerging work suggests that artificial intelligence (AI) can serve as a helpful starting point for identifying high‑utility words in a text and generating student‑friendly definitions, often with visuals. When used thoughtfully and curated by teachers, AI can find and flag the individual words that matter most for reading comprehension.
Engage in wide reading
Of course, students can learn the greatest number of words simply by reading a variety of texts. Wide reading exposes us to new vocabulary, reinforces words we already know, and shows us how the same word can function differently, or have a different meaning, across contexts.
Why etymology and morphology matter—and not just to me!
Given my interests, it won’t surprise you that I’d like to dig a little deeper into why etymology and morphology matter.
Etymology and morphology are closely related, but etymology explains a word’s history while morphology explains its structure. Etymology fueled my passion for words, but morphology fueled my instruction—an approach that research strongly supports.
Reading researcher Elfrieda Hiebert focuses on the idea that proficient reading comprehension depends heavily on students’ knowledge of a relatively small core vocabulary. Many of these core words belong to what she calls “morphological word families,” that is, groups of words built from the same base or root and expanded through prefixes and suffixes. For example:
- form = shape
- reform = shape again
- transform = change shape
- formation = the way something is shaped
- information = from an early Latin meaning “to give shape to the mind” (a great etymology moment!)
Once students know that the root word “form” means “shape,” they can unlock the meaning of dozens of related words. And if they get stuck, etymology can step in to save the day.
Hiebert notes that roughly 2,500 morphological word families account for the vast majority of words students will encounter in academic texts. That’s why she recommends prioritizing instruction of word families rather than spending a lot of time teaching rare or isolated words.
Hiebert has found that when students understand core words deeply, they’re better equipped to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words because they can use context clues more effectively. Students also benefit from encountering word families repeatedly across texts. This gives them multiple exposures to the same roots and affixes in different contexts, and such repeated contact helps improve both vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension.
Tips for building students’ vocabulary in upper elementary school
So how does this look in practice with younger readers? Reading researcher Jessica Toste points out that multisyllabic words dominate academic texts in upper elementary school. For example, she estimates that students may encounter more than 20,000 instances of multisyllabic words per year. What’s more, these words often carry the bulk of a text’s meaning. That’s why Toste recommends a multistep approach for teaching morphology:
- Introduce the word part
- Provide sample words
- Offer student‑friendly definitions
- Ask students to generate their own examples (including nonsense words)
- Have students use these example words in their own writing
- Provide frequent reviews of roots and affixes through bank charts or flashcards
Through this method, Toste finds that students gain confidence with longer, more complex words.
Tips for building students’ vocabulary in middle and high school
As students move from elementary school to middle and high school, the reading demands increase dramatically. And as the texts become denser and the vocabulary more specialized, the same tools scale to more complex words and concepts.
Reading researchers Katie Wilburn and Emily Solari explain why morphology instruction is especially powerful for adolescent and multilingual learners in their 2024 article, “Brick by Brick: Landmark Studies on Using Morphology Instruction to Increase Academic Vocabulary Knowledge.” In short, morphology helps them:
- Decode unfamiliar words
- Infer meanings
- Build conceptual networks
- Understand academic vocabulary
- Strengthen spelling
- Improve reading comprehension
Wilburn and Solari also emphasize that explicit, meaning‑focused instruction benefits all learners, but especially those who need additional support with reading or are learning English. For multilingual learners in particular, explicit instruction can leverage their ability to connect English morphemes to cognates or familiar word parts in their home languages.
According to Wilburn and Solari, effective vocabulary instruction for adolescents includes:
- Teaching high‑utility morphemes (e.g., pre‑, re‑, ‑tion, ‑able)
- Analyzing morphological families
- Connecting morphology to content‑area vocabulary
- Encouraging students to generate new words using known morphemes
The approaches remain the same; only the words and texts become more demanding as students progress in school. The outcome remains the same, too; knowing morphology supports independent meaning‑making at any age.
What if your school doesn’t have a morphology-focused vocabulary program?
You don’t need a specialized curriculum to use these methods for building students’ vocabulary. You can adopt an existing program (some are free!) or adapt one to meet your students’ needs. Two excellent resources to consider are Word Connections, a free multisyllabic word‑reading program developed by Toste, and Text Project, a hub for free vocabulary and morphology materials created by Hiebert.
Another delightful example of how word love can come alive for kids is the introduction to the book The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels. The entire premise of the novel revolves around etymology, with language itself becoming a character in the story. If you’re looking for a light, fun, and kid‑friendly book to build curiosity about words, it’s worth finding this one at your local library.
To further tailor your program, you can also collaborate with other educators at your school, such as math, science, social studies, and even PE teachers. Ask them which roots and affixes appear most frequently in the texts they teach and have students read. This collaboration will pay off when students start to find word connections across subjects, reinforcing the idea that morphology has real-world applications. In fact, this cross‑content approach was often a turning point for my students. Once they began noticing the same roots and affixes in other classes, their excitement and confidence grew.
How MAP Growth Reading and MAP Reading Fluency support vocabulary development
As you build vocabulary through instruction, tools that measure students’ knowledge can offer helpful insight. If your school uses MAP® Growth™, note that the reading test has a dedicated instructional area for vocabulary, so you can monitor how students’ vocabulary knowledge develops over time. Research also shows that general comprehension measures (like MAP Growth) can provide a more rigorous view of vocabulary’s impact on reading than tests built around familiar passages. Tracking vocabulary growth from one administration to the next can surface the instructional impact of intentional changes you make at the class or unit level.
If a student scores lower than expected on the MAP Growth reading test, a helpful next step is to explore how the student’s vocabulary knowledge may be affecting their reading fluency. MAP® Reading Fluency™ assesses multiple dimensions of fluency, including automaticity, expression, and vocabulary. And it can provide a clearer picture of whether limited vocabulary is contributing to a student’s comprehension challenges.
Together, MAP Growth and MAP Reading Fluency offer a comprehensive view of students’ reading development and can help educators make informed decisions about students who may need extra support or intervention, including help with vocabulary.
How building students’ vocabulary can make them budding etymologists, too!
What I loved most about teaching vocabulary was discovering, year after year, that my enthusiasm for etymology (and commitment to teaching morphology) had rubbed off on my students. In their end‑of‑year evaluations, I often saw notes like this addressed to the next year’s class: “Learning Greek and Latin roots may seem boring at first, but stick with it. Knowing them can really help you in your other classes.”
It turns out my not‑so‑secret passion had a way of becoming my students’, too.
