One of the challenges of teaching disciplinary vocabulary effectively is the paucity of available, classroom-friendly vocabulary assessments that can be used to gauge students' vocabulary growth and to inform vocabulary instruction. This article describes the intricacies of word knowledge that make assessment difficult. Three continua…

The author presents four approaches to shared reading that he used with first through third graders in a high-needs, urban elementary school with a large population of students from immigrant homes. Using sociocultural and cognitive constructivist principles, the author shows how these approaches built students' academic vocabulary and…

A read-aloud program focused on vocabulary and comprehension skills for children bilingual in Quechua and Spanish was evaluated for efficacy. The authors present a study with classrooms of first-grade students, suggesting that specific read-aloud strategies that target the use of background knowledge in a discussion-based format can be a…