Vocabulary
This type of vocabulary word appears across all content areas and includes terms like analyze, compare, and interpret.
What is general academic vocabulary?
Words like describe, compare, and justify signal this core component of academic language.
What are language functions?
This academic language demand refers to how words, symbols, or phrases are structured into sentences, equations, graphs, or tables.
What is syntax?
This academic language demand involves the structures of communication in a discipline, including how paragraphs, lab reports, arguments, and routines are organized.
What is discourse?
A teacher previewing vocabulary before reading—such as ecosystem, integer, or tempo—is offering this kind of support.
What is pre-teaching vocabulary?
Knowing how prefixes, suffixes, and roots work helps students decode terms like photosynthesis, cardiovascular, or unconstitutional even if they’ve never seen them before.
What is morphological knowledge.
Examples:
Common PREFIXES: in-; un-; mis-; dis-; fore-; re-; de-; pre-; a-
Common SUFFIXES: -hood; -ion; -ship; -y; -s; -es; -ed; -ing; -er; -or; -ible; -able
When students must justify a warm-up strategy in PE, explain a math process, or analyze a character’s motivation, they are performing this type of language demand.
What is using academic verbs to communicate disciplinary thinking and/or using disciplinary language function.
Teachers help students with this syntactic skill when they break down long or complicated sentences into manageable parts to support comprehension.
What is sentence chunking (or chunking for meaning)?
A math teacher requiring students to write out multi-step solutions in a specific order is teaching this disciplinary discourse structure.
What is a procedural explanation?
Providing students with “Because ___, therefore ___” to help them justify answers is an example of this classroom support.
What are sentence frames or starters?
In all subjects, teachers must teach vocabulary that has different meanings in everyday vs. academic contexts — like power, expression, scale, or function.
What are discipline-specific vocabulary words (especially those with multiple meanings)?
A PE teacher asking students to justify a conditioning choice, a music teacher asking them to interpret dynamics, and a science teacher asking them to predict an outcome are all prompting this.
What are content-specific language functions?
Students struggle with this syntactic issue when they misread pronouns like they in the sentence:
“The variables increased when they were divided.”
What is incorrect or unclear pronoun reference?
When PE students must verbally describe how to perform a skill (“First step… Next… Finally…”), they use this discourse pattern.
What is sequence/ordering text structure?
Using visuals (maps, diagrams, images, notation) to support comprehension is especially recommended for ELLs. These supports are called...
What are multimodal language supports?
Understanding metaphors, idioms, and nuanced expressions supports comprehension of complex classroom texts across content areas.
What is figurative academic vocabulary?
BONUS: for those teams that can give an accurate example of a metaphor, an idiom, an analogy, a simile, and a nuanced expression.
Science students may use it to examine data trends, English students to study character motivation, and social studies students to explore causes and effects.
What is the language function to analyze?
In CA/L, math, science, and PhyEd, students need to use these words (like consequently, whereas, similarly) to understand relationships between ideas.
What are connective (signal) words?
An art teacher asking students to write a critique using description → analysis → interpretation → judgment is teaching this type of discourse structure.
What is a critique framework/organizational pattern?
This strategy helps students learn new academic vocabulary by connecting related words in webs (e.g., revolt – revolution – revolutionary).
What is a semantic map/graphic organizer?
This strategy supports ELLs when academic words share similarity with their home language, such as civilización/civilization.
What is teaching using cognates?
Students demonstrate this language function when they construct a position, support it with evidence, address counterclaims, and reach a justified conclusion.
What is argue/construct an argument?
This syntactic skill helps students interpret sentences requiring multiple ideas, such as:
“The athlete improved because, although fatigued, she adjusted her pacing.”
What is sentence-level inferencing?
A social studies teacher guiding students to write thesis statements, cite sources, and use meta-commentary (e.g., “In other words…”) is teaching this advanced discourse skill.
What is historical argumentation/discursive writing?
This support aligns with edTPA expectations and requires teachers to identify the function, vocabulary, syntax, and discourse before planning instruction.
What is planning for language demands?