For each book in our free collection, we selected 30 Tier Two words for students to learn prior to reading the text. Because the “secret sauce” in InferCabulary is semantic reasoning, this approach provides them with at least six different contexts. Playing through a whole mountain should result in students “owning” these words on a deep level, increasing their ability to notice and apply understanding to the text when the words are encountered during reading.
Our speech, language and literacy team is a huge fan of the work of Beck & McKeown, Biemiller, Marzano, Templeton, Ganske, and Heibert, among others. We have explored lists of all kinds, including Words Worth Teaching, The Academic Word List, Academic Collocation List, Living Word Vocabulary, The New General Services List, and SAT/ACT lists to name a few. We have identified words that are more generally “worth knowing” by grade level, and made those available to you and your students. Finally, we curated a few lists to help students with English Language Arts (e.g., emotion words that will assist them in identifying the author's purpose and tone) and for preparing for standardized tests.