Mini-Lesson on Vocabulary

In Tompkins, it says that vocabulary knowledge and reading achievement are closely related. As a teacher it is extremely important to facilitate vocabulary instruction. One thing I want to introduce in my classroom prior to my lesson is a list of word-learning strategies my students can use while reading.
*Look at the word in relation to the sentence.
*Sound it out.
*Read the sentence again.
*Look for other key words in the sentence.
*Think what makes sense.
*Ask a friend to read the sentence to you.
*Read around the word and then go back.

To introduce content-area vocabulary words from the story, The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis I would first begin by activating the students prior knowledge. We would create a K-W-L chart about life in Afghanistan during the present war. I could introduce magazine articles and pictures to have the students analyze and become familiar with their lifestyles.
Then I will explain to my class that we are getting ready to begin reading the story, The Breadwinner. We will read 6 words I have found in the first chapter out loud to familiarize the students with them: marketplace, Taliban, university, conquerors, militia, forbade. I will ask the students to mark on a word-familiarity quide how well they know the following words. The six words will be listed in a column on the left and they must mark whether they know the word, have seen it, or don't know it and then color the column an appropriate color. Red for know the word, yellow for have seen it and blue for don't know it.
Then the students will be divided into groups where they will receive a short paragraph with one of the 6 vocabulary words in it. As a group they must read the paragraph and write down some possible definitions by using context clues. After that the groups will share their findings with the class.
Then while in their groups I will pass out 12 large index cards. 6 will have the words on them and the other six will have their definitions. Students will work together to connect the word to its definition. Afterwards, we will discuss as a class the correct definitions for each word.
Lastly, the students will read the chapter and then as a class we will fill in the end of the K-W-L chart we began at the beginning. I will have students do a quickwrite on the life in Afghanistan at this time and use the 6 vocab words we just studied.