The Importance of Vocabulary

I want to take you back in time. You’re in the fourth grade and you’re about to read a passage aloud with the whole class.  Your friend Joey finishes reading this sentence: “She delicately squeezed the icing tube , and she created  flawless flowers all around the edges of the wedding cake.” Your teacher asks you, “What do you think delicately means?” You’re panicking now, right?!

In the intermediate grades, children often hesitate to state what they truly think the answer is.  However, it is crucial that we as educators ensure that our students have good vocabularies.  Studies show that the less vocabulary a child knows, the harder it will be for them to continue reading on their grade level.  Pronunciation of words may not be the issue for a child, and he/she could just be passed onto the next grade level without a good comprehension of their vocabulary.  In my opinion, a child cannot own a word until they KNOW what it means.  In my case, I can read in German all day long, but I only know a small bit of what any of it means.  Reading it is not the problem, but understanding it is!  This is why we as educators need to ask our students questions like “What do you think that means?” or “Can you give me a definition of that word?”.  Children don’t always like it, but they need to be aware of what the words on the page mean.  It’s for THEIR benefit!

We also need to teach our students strategies that they can use in order to “decode” new words.  Context clues, breaking words down into root words (morphology), and even grabbing a dictionary for a quick definition are all great suggestions for children.  Students with a higher vocabulary usually have greater comprehension, thus when encountering new words, they will be able to decode the word’s meaning quicker.

As you could assume, teaching vocabulary and decoding strategies for new words is a MUST!!! If you want to read more about how vocabulary is incredibly crucial to our students’ academic growth, read this article by clicking here.  You can also click here for a detailed packet on vocabulary instruction in the classroom!

P.S. Please visit my Pirates (Arghh) page, and read the section on Peter and the Starcatchers.  There, I talk about some additional vocabulary building techniques when teaching with great literature!

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