This article reports on 2 studies with kindergarten and first‐grade children from a low‐achieving elementary school that provided vocabulary instruction by the students’ regular classroom teacher of sophisticated words (advanced vocabulary words) from children’s trade books that are typically read aloud. Study 1 compared the number of sophisticated words learned between 52 children who were directly taught the words and 46 children who received no instruction. As expected, children in the experimental group learned significantly more words. Study 2, a within‐subject design, examined 76 children’s learning of words under 2 different amounts of instruction, either 3 days or 6 days. In Study 2, the vocabulary gains in kindergarten and first‐grade children for words that received more instruction were twice as large. Student vocabulary was assessed by a picture test where students were presented with pictures that represented different words and were asked to identify which picture represented the wo...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/511706

Increasing Young Low‐Income Children’s Oral Vocabulary Repertoires through Rich and Focused Instruction

This meta-analysis examines the effects of vocabulary interventions on pre-K and kindergarten children’s oral language development The authors quantitatively reviewed 67 studies and 216 effect sizes to better understand the impact of training on word learning Results indicated an overall effect size of 88, demonstrating, on average, a gain of nearly one standard deviation on vocabulary measures Moderator analyses reported greater effects for trained adults in providing the treatment, combined pedagogical strategies that included explicit and implicit instruction, and author-created measures compared to standardized measures Middle- and upper-income at-risk children were significantly more likely to benefit from vocabulary intervention than those students also at risk and poor These results indicate that although they might improve oral language skills, vocabulary interventions are not sufficiently powerful to close the gap—even in the preschool and kindergarten years

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The Effects of Vocabulary Intervention on Young Children’s Word Learning A Meta-Analysis

This meta-analysis examines to what extent interactive storybook reading stimulates two pillars of learning to read: vocabulary and print knowledge. The authors quantitatively reviewed 31 (quasi) experiments (n = 2,049 children) in which educators were trained to encourage children to be actively involved before, during, and after joint book reading. A moderate effect size was found for oral language skills, implying that both quality of book reading in classrooms and frequency are important. Although teaching print-related skills is not part of interactive reading programs, 7% of the variance in kindergarten children’s alphabetic knowledge could be attributed to the intervention. The study also shows that findings with experimenters were simply not replicable in a natural classroom setting. Further research is needed to disentangle the processes that explain the effects of interactive reading on children’s print knowledge and the strategies that may help transfer intervention effects from researchers to ...

Interactive Book Reading in Early Education: A Tool to Stimulate Print Knowledge as Well as Oral Language

The authors reviewed all peer-reviewed studies with participants from preschool to Grade 8 for this meta-analysis of morphological interventions. They identified 22 applicable studies. Instructional effects (Cohen’s d) were averaged by linguistic outcome categories (morphological sublexical, nonmorphological sublexical, lexical, and supralexical) and comparison group (experimental group vs. control or experimental group vs. alternative training). The authors investigated the effects of morphological instruction (a) on reading, spelling, vocabulary, and morphological skills, (b) for less able readers versus undifferentiated samples, (c) for younger versus older students, and (d) in combination with instruction of other literacy skills or in isolation. Results indicate that (a) morphological instruction benefits learners, (b) it brings particular benefits for less able readers, (c) it is no less effective for younger students, and (d) it is more effective when combined with other aspects of literacy instruc...

The Effects of Morphological Instruction on Literacy Skills A Systematic Review of the Literature

The present study sought to clarify the relations amongst serial decoding, irregular word recognition, listening comprehension, facets of oral vocabulary and reading comprehension in two cohorts of children differing in reading level In the process, the components of the simple view of reading were evaluated Students in grades 1 (n = 67) and 6 (n = 56) were assessed on measures of phonological awareness, decoding, irregular word recognition, listening comprehension, oral vocabulary, and reading comprehension Even when all other measures were controlled, vocabulary was found to explain reading comprehension in grade 6 but not grade 1 Vocabulary also predicted decoding in grade 6 and irregular word recognition in both grades These results are interpreted as supporting a not-so-simple view of the constructs underlying reading comprehension that acknowledges complex connections between print skills and oral language

A not-so-simple view of reading: how oral vocabulary and visual-word recognition complicate the story

Teaching vocabulary to primary grade children is essential. Previous studies of teaching vocabulary (word meanings) using story books in the primary grades reported gains of 20%-25% of word meanings taught. The present studies concern possible influences on word meaning acquisition during instruction (Study 1) and increasing the percentage and number of word meanings acquired (Study 2). Both studies were conducted in a working-class school with approximately 50% English-language learners. The regular classroom teachers worked with their whole classes in these studies. In Study 1, average gains of 12% of word meanings were obtained using repeated reading. Adding word explanations added a 10% gain for a total gain of 22%. Pretesting had no effect on gains. In Study 2, results showed learning of 41% of word meanings taught. At this rate of learning word meanings taught, it would be possible for children to learn 400 word meanings a year if 1,000 word meanings were taught. The feasibility of teaching vocabulary to primary grade children is discussed.

Catherine Boote

Papers

An effective method for building meaning vocabulary in primary grades