Vocabulary: Big Ideas in Beginning Reading

Today, Jennifer asked me to be a guest blogger and share with you a great strategy that has worked for me. Some of you may remember me as the first time blogger at the age of 63 from "She Who Writes her Own Story" Having worked in a Title I school for many years as an ESL Resource teacher I did a lot of research into vocabulary development. One of the best research studies came from Hart and Risley, 1995. "Children come to school with meaningful differences in vocabulary knowledge. According to their research what matters is a student's relative economic advantage. Children living in poverty hear one-third the number of words per minute than those of the working class.Not only was there a difference in numbers of words but also in quality. Students living in poverty aren't exposed to rich, robust words and by the time they enter school the vocabulary knowledge gap is even wider. Explicit Vocabulary Instruction is necessary to help bridge that gap for these students . You can read more about their research at: http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/voc/voc_what.php#research
Here is a wonderful strategy that worked for our students. It is free at my TpT store. Would truly appreciate it if you would pin and +1 and follow me. You can also check out my blog LMN Tree for other reading strategies.

Thank you Jennifer for this wonderful opportunity to share a great reading strategy with your followers.

How will you use this idea in your classroom?