research and/or opinions on size of vocabulary lists

I have been a strong believer in the importance of teaching vocabulary to my students since I began teaching back in the dark ages. I like to provide a list of ten words that have a common theme and ask the kids to be able to spell and define the list each Friday. It has worked very well for me in the past. Recently, our school board mandated a vocabulary workshop book for every student. This book provides lists of 20 words that have no reason to be placed in the same list and then the students spend hours doing worksheets to "learn" these words. Some of my students enjoy the books but many of my students shut down and I see very little gain in their vocabularies because of these books. I have been taking ten of the 20 words and asking the kids to practice them and spell them and define them. To make a long story short, I think a list of ten is more effective than a list of twenty words. Has anyone found this to be true and if so, is there research to back up my theory? I tried to write a research paper on this topic for one of my classes but did not find much. I would like to be able to provide research based evidence to my school board.

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Comment by Cathy Herstead on June 13, 2011 at 9:43pm: I think having the words share a common theme is a great idea. I think 20 words is too much for a week's lesson too. I spread it over 2 weeks with vocab pages on Fridays, a vocab game like Jeopardy on Friday, a pre-test on the Wednesday before the test and finally a test on Friday. I figured the more times the students see the words the better chances are that they'll remember them. I think vocabulary is important too. I can't remember where I read how many times it takes a student seeing a word before he/she can remember it. I wish I had marked that stat because it's why I stretch my vocab unit over 2 weeks.

Comment by Grace Gorman on July 14, 2011 at 10:55am: I think I remember hearing that a child must be exposed to a word at least 14 times in order to recognize it - let alone understand and use it. Have you tried putting the words into Vocabulary/Spelling City.com. It will do the words, use them in sentences, put them into a zillion games and either teach or test them and the kids love it. Put the 20 in and let them work the list till they know it.