ABSTRACT
In high-performing urban schools, teachers help students develop fluency with the vocabulary that serves as a gatekeeper to understanding challenging academic content. The gates of understanding swing open when students are fluent users of essential vocabulary related to the objective teachers want students to learn. By developing the students’ fluency with gatekeeper vocabulary, teachers build students’ sense of efficacy related to the academic content. Teachers at Signal Hill Elementary in Long Beach, California, carefully preidentified important vocabulary words associated with the lessons they intended to teach. In high-performing urban schools, teachers helped students acquire fluency with new vocabulary by motivating students to use the new vocabulary in oral and written communication they produced. To promote the continued use of important vocabulary words, many teachers in high-performing urban schools implemented strategies to help ensure that students would maintain fluency with gatekeeper vocabulary.
