February 19th, 2010 Vocabulary & Reading
I read a lot about different methods of teaching reading. When I grew up, we learned by an eclectic mixture of look-say and phonics, and most of us learned to read. Sarah definitely prefers look-say; her memory for new words is really amazing. She’s going through the intensive Rod & Staff phonics, but she doesn’t like to have to sound out words.
What I don’t see many educators talking about is the importance of vocabulary in reading. Maybe this is because it’s such a basic concept that it doesn’t need repetition. A child who grows up hearing a high level of vocabulary learns so many words just by hearing them….and that makes reading so much easier!
The goal of reading is comprehension. If a child is learning by the look-say method, then when he’s introduced to a word, he already has an idea what that word means. He doesn’t have to look it up in the dictionary. If he’s learning by phonics, he can say, “Oh, I recognize that word! So this is how it’s spelled.”
What’s sad is that so many children grow up in environments where they’re more likely to hear cursing and crude slang rather than good English. This puts the children at a disadvantage from the very start.
