Catherine Snow on the point of vocabulary learning

Exposure to rich vocabulary in the preK-3 classroom is the best preparation for academic success in later grades, when students will be expected to read texts dense with academic and technical words ("Small Kids, Big Words: Research-based strategies for building vocabulary from preK to grade 3," HEL May/June 2008). The point, though, is not to learn the words for themselves, but rather to become familiar with the domains of knowledge in which they are embedded. Learning words like hibernate, temperature, and migrate makes perfect sense for a class that is reading books or doing science projects on adaptations to seasonal changes—then the learning activities will ensure that the words are meaningful, that they will recur often enough to be acquired, and that the children will have authentic reasons to use them.

Learning such words because they appear on a list is not good practice. But many of the most important words for children to learn refer to processes of communication and knowledge making. These include words like prove, suggest, confirm, deny, agree, argue, hypothesis, theory, probably, apparently, evidently. In the process of learning to use words like these, children also learn about having discussions, proving points, displaying evidence, and considering alternate positions ("Hot Topics and Key Words: Pilot project brings teachers together to tackle middle school literacy," HEL March/April 2008) This is crucial, but the words don’t ‘belong’ to any particular content area. Rather, they belong to academic discourse of the kind that should be going on in any lively learning environment, relevant to a wide array of topics children might be engaged by.

Catherine Snow is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.