Vocabulary - Lessen the Gap
I just finished attending Core Reading Academy. The instructor in this academy spent five days discussing what a robust reading curriculum should include. One whole day was spent on vocabulary instruction. Our instructor pointed out that children come to school having a wide range of vocabulary abilities. There are huge gaps between various students. As the students grow older, many times the gap continues to widen. She told us that there are four parts to an effective vocabulary program. Students need instruction in specific words to enhance the comprehension of texts containing those words. They need instruction in independent word-learning strategies and they need word consciousness and word-play activities to motivate and enhance their learning. They also need a lot of independent reading to expand their word knowledge. Students needs to know many, many more words than teachers have the time to teach in the classroom. One of the ways students learn the words they need to know is by doing a lot of outside reading. This reading can be on their own or they can be read to. I want to encourage parents to continue to read to their children for as long as they can. The vocabulary benefits that children receive are enormous. If, for some reason, you can't spend time reading to your children, consider getting them books on CD's to listen to. By listening to books that are written at a higher level than they can read easily, their vocabularies increase and that helps them to be able to read those words with understanding in the future. The more time your children spend reading and listening to books read to them, the greater their vocabularies will be.
