The typical approach to teaching vocabulary in English/Language Arts programs has been to focus on six to eight words per text. Even though these words may add meaning to a particular story, the target words are often rare and their generalizability is limited. The Vocabulary Megaclusters provides a framework for selecting and teaching words according to their shared meaning and function in stories. Within each of the 13 Vocabulary Megaclusters, words are clustered according to conceptual connections such as emotions and traits of characters or the actions and motions in which characters engage. This article develops the rationale for the Vocabulary Megaclusters framework and illustrates how this approach provides students with a metacognitive stance that supports them in developing a rich literary vocabulary. (Contains 2 figures and 4 tables.)