Vocabulary

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Vocabulary
Vocabulary includes the words we must know to communicate effectively. Vocabulary is also very important to reading comprehension. Readers cannot understand what they are reading without knowing what most of the words mean. Learning to read more advanced texts means readers must learn the meaning of new words that are not part of their oral vocabulary.

Source: the National Institute for Literacy

For detailed information on the five components of effective reading instruction download Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read—a free publication of the National Institute for Literacy available here.

Online Vocabulary Resources:

www.vocabulary.com
A free, comprehensive resource that can be used to enhance vocabulary mastery and written/verbal skills with Latin and Greek roots.

www.freerice.com
FreeRice provides free English vocabulary practice, and at the same time helps end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free through the United Nations World Food Program. “Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.”

Children of the Code Reference Library: Vocabulary & Reading
A series of short snippets of information regarding vocabulary and reading from Children of the Code's noted interviews over the years–including Dr. G. Reid Lyon, Dr. Anne Cunningham, and others. Here's a sample of what you'll find:

Vocabulary enters through print
"Consider the kids who we don’t get to who still are having print problems that are labored, hesitant, and inaccurate as they come up through second grade, third grade, and fifth grade. Well, after fourth grade, or during fourth grade and beyond, vocabulary now enters through print. It doesn’t enter through hanging out with your friends on the corner. So, now we start to get further behind in vocabulary, such that even when the kids are accommodated for, that is books are read to them through some platform or modality and they have some type of accommodations, they still do not have the background knowledge that should have been fostered by reading from day one and we have this constant trajectory of failure with the gap widening and widening."

G. Reid Lyon, Past-Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Current senior vice president for research and evaluation with Best Associates. Source: COTC Interview