Teaching Vocabulary with the Frayer Model

One of the strategies that I learned about through my Teaching American History grant was the Frayer Model. It is a method for teaching students vocabulary. Students start with the definition and then discuss characteristics of that word. Next we discussed examples and non-examples. It might be best to start off a class with a word that is easy for them, but not necessarily related to history. Examples might be: shopping, war, education, and the Internet.

I have now used it twice. The first time was on Monday for helping students understand the word "emancipation" prior to our study of the Emancipation Proclamation. Here is one of the class's results:

The second time I used it was as part of an intervention for students were struggling to understand the concepts of state's rights and federal authority. I walked them through state's rights on one side of the paper and then federal authority on the other side. It worked so well that I am going to use it again and again when we come across important terms that students need to know like tyranny. I think it also would be very helpful to English Language Learners.