Using Content Acquisition Podcasts to Teach Vocabulary to Students With Learning Disabilities Across Academic Content Areas

Students with disabilities, including those with learning disabilities (LD), face persistent challenges in acquiring and retaining academic vocabulary, which can undermine their academic success across content areas and overall reading achievement. Content Acquisition Podcasts (CAPs) are multimedia instructional tools that deliver explicit, evidence-based vocabulary instruction in accessible, engaging formats. CAPs are a flexible tool that can be used to support vocabulary acquisition and comprehension, especially in inclusive settings where students with LD are receiving instruction and would benefit from structured supports, visual scaffolds, and repeated exposure. This article reintroduces CAPs, outlines recent enhancements to their design, provides step-by-step procedures for creating CAPs, and offers actionable suggestions for implementing CAPs in science, social studies, English, and mathematics classrooms. Overall, this article outlines how CAPs provide a flexible approach to supporting students with LD through research-based multimedia instruction that fosters vocabulary acquisition and deeper conceptual understanding across various academic content areas.