Start the Year with Strong Routines
A new school year is the best time to build routines that last. What you do in the first few weeks sets the pattern for the rest of the year. How you introduce new words. How you check for understanding. How you scaffold discussion. These early habits shape how students learn for months to come.
Routines built now save you planning time later. They also give students predictability and structure, and that structure helps new learning stick.
Why Vocabulary, Why Now
Vocabulary is a great place to start. Many students with disabilities enter grades 4 through 8 with documented vocabulary gaps. These gaps widen over time, even when students decode text well. As text gets harder in the upper grades, an unaddressed gap blocks access to every content area, not just reading. If you don’t address that gap early, it compounds as units build on each other.
“The goal is not memorization; it is making meaning accessible.”
That’s the idea behind our newest TTACtic, Words That Stick. We built this practical, evidence-based vocabulary routine for teachers of students with disabilities in grades 4 through 8. You can fold it into your instruction starting day one.
What Is Words That Stick?
Words That Stick uses five steps: Say It, Define It, Connect It, Example It, Use It. The routine targets what students with learning disabilities and other high-incidence disabilities need most. It gives them planned, repeated chances to hear, see, and use a word until they master it. Full word knowledge typically takes 8 to 20 exposures across varied contexts. This routine builds that repetition in by design.
The TTACtic walks you through two full model lessons: transportation and perimeter. Each one shows how to select a word, map its morphemes, pair it with visuals, and scaffold student responses. Students move from simple recall to independent use. Teachers can also extend Connect It into semantic feature analysis as a next step. Research shows this technique produces some of the largest reading comprehension gains for students with learning disabilities.
High-Leverage Practices Meet Vocabulary Instruction
Words That Stick builds on High-Leverage Practices special educators already use. Here’s where three of them show up in the routine itself:
HLP 1: Collaborate with professionals to increase student success. The TACtic encourages teachers to coordinate target vocabulary with the general education teacher, EL teacher, or speech-language pathologist, so specialists can reteach the same words in small-group or push-in support.
HLP 16: Use explicit instruction to teach content, strategies, and skills. Every step of the routine is built around the practice of clear definitions, modeled examples, and multiple structured response opportunities so no student is left guessing at meaning.
HLP 22: Provide positive and constructive feedback to guide students’ learning. The routine’s Use It step gives every student a sentence frame for initial practice, then fades that support as independence grows, creating a built-in moment for teachers to affirm correct use and correct errors before independent use is expected.
Inside This TACtic
-A five-step routine you can use tomorrow, with any Tier 2 word, in any subject
-Two full model lessons, transportation and perimeter, that show you exactly what to say, word for word
-Ready-made sentence frames and scaffolded prompts, so every student has a way in
-A ready-to-go slide deck, linked and editable, so you can run the routine with any word your students need next
-The research we’ve already cited for you: HLP 16, WWC Practice Guide 29, the 2024 VA English SOLs, and more
Start the Year Strong
Establish routines before the pace of the year picks up. Introduce Words That Stick now, while units are still new and you’re still setting expectations. Your students will know what to do the next time a hard word shows up, whether in October or May. The earlier the routine becomes second nature, the more instructional time it saves later.
Try It This Week
Pick one word. Any Tier 2 word from a unit you’re already teaching. Walk your students through all five steps this week, and watch what happens when a word gets more than one pass and every student has a way to make it their own.
Access the full TACtic at: Words That Stick
When we make vocabulary instruction explicit and give students real chances to work with a word, not just hear its definition once, we open the rest of the year’s curriculum to every student!