Editor’s Note
Early vocabulary knowledge predicts later reading success. A new study published in Reading Research Quarterly shows that using multiple methods of vocabulary instruction is more effective than any single method. This award-winning article from our archives explores research-based strategies for teaching vocabulary to preK–3 students.
Volume 24, Number 3
May/June 2008
Small Kids, Big Words
Research-based strategies for building vocabulary from preK to grade 3
By LAURA PAPPANO
Small Kids, Big Words, continued
Small Kids, Big Words: Research-based strategies for building vocabulary from preK to grade 3
Small Kids, Big Words
Morning meeting begins with—no surprise—the weather. But when preschool teacher Radha Hernandez describes the drenching winter downpour, she doesn’t reach for a rainy day symbol to stick on a calendar. She reaches for words.
“I was curled up under the covers. I was cozy, toasty warm and outside I heard an am-a-a-a-zing thing,” says Hernandez, a founding teacher at Lee Academy, a pilot school in Boston serving children from age three to third grade. “Thunder! Thunder! I heard thunder outside my window. It was a loud, crashing, booming sound.”
The ten children clustered in a horseshoe on the rug (two others will arrive later) perk up. Timmy insists he didn’t hear it. No one believes him, but he stands his verbal ground. “I didn’t want to hear it and so that is why I didn’t listen,” he says.
Molly, who’s four, adds, “I guess he was ignoring it.”
This is an excerpt from the Harvard Education Letter.
Subscribers can click here to continue reading this article.
Click here to become a subscriber.
Morning meeting begins with—no surprise—the weather. But when preschool teacher Radha Hernandez describes the drenching winter downpour, she doesn’t reach for a rainy day symbol to stick on a calendar. She reaches for words.
“I was curled up under the covers. I was cozy, toasty warm and outside I heard an am-a-a-a-zing thing,” says Hernandez, a founding teacher at Lee Academy, a pilot school in Boston serving children from age three to third grade. “Thunder! Thunder! I heard thunder outside my window. It was a loud, crashing, booming sound.”
The ten children clustered in a horseshoe on the rug (two others will arrive later) perk up. Timmy insists he didn’t hear it. No one believes him, but he stands his verbal ground. “I didn’t want to hear it and so that is why I didn’t listen,” he says.
Molly, who’s four, adds, “I guess he was ignoring it.”
