Interactive book reading (IBR) as a context for vocabulary learning is studied widely in preschool children and kindergarteners. In the present study, we elaborate on this prior research by investigating the effects of a five-week IBR intervention on first graders' expressive target vocabulary growth. A repeated measures design with two…

Engaging in frequent, meaningful conversation during the early years of schooling is foundational for children's literacy development. Specifically, developing oral language through daily conversations is essential for language comprehension, and eventually, reading comprehension. In this article, we discuss how teachers can use the…

Engaging in frequent, meaningful conversation during the early years of schooling is foundational for children's literacy development. Specifically, developing oral language through daily conversations is essential for language comprehension, and eventually, reading comprehension. In this article, we discuss how teachers can use the…

Purpose: Word learning requires the creation of phonological and semantic representations and links in long-term memory. Phonological distance of a given word from the spoken language affects children's lexical-phonological representations and processing. The study investigates the role of the phonological distance of Modern Standard Arabic (StA)…

Although development of young children's vocabulary knowledge is critical for their literacy, it often is neglected in classrooms, especially those pressed for time. In this article we explore a literacy coach's implementation of SAIL (Survey, Analyze, Interpret, Link), an instructional framework that integrates academic vocabulary (AV)…

In this manuscript we show how readalouds can significantly enrich student vocabulary and comprehension by demonstrating enhancements that will foster student learning and language development. We anchor our examples to empirical evidence demonstrating that the content of a readaloud (i.e., the what we teach) as well as the quality of the…

We discuss an original study and two replications conducted over 18 years examining the impact of Teacher Study Group (TSG) in Vocabulary, a professional development (PD) approach for improving pedagogy and student learning. Study 1 focused on the design and development of the PD and included a small-scale randomized controlled trial to assess the…

While there is a strong research base that supports intervening early in mathematics, research investigating the importance of mathematics vocabulary is still emerging. Practitioners and researchers may benefit from understanding how mathematics interventions support mathematics vocabulary acquisition, particularly for students who struggle with…

The relation of morphological awareness with reading comprehension is well established. For this advance to inform instruction, the push is now on to understand how morphological awareness is related to reading comprehension. We address this question here by examining potential mechanisms. We do so with children in Grade 1, a time at which it is…

In this manuscript we show how read alouds can significantly enrich student vocabulary and comprehension by demonstrating enhancements that will foster student learning and language development. We anchor our examples to empirical evidence demonstrating that the content of a read aloud (i.e., the what we teach) as well as the quality of the…

The current study examined the relation between the amount of literacy instruction and student reading achievement (word reading and reading comprehension), using data from 927 students and their 189 teachers from Grades 1 to 3 in the US. Literacy instruction was observed once in the Fall and once in the Spring each year from two projects. We…

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) served as a test case for determining the role of extant vocabulary knowledge, endogenous attention, and phonological working memory abilities in cross-situational word learning. First-graders (M[subscript age] = 7 years; 3 months), 44 with typical development (TD) and 28 with DLD, completed a…

Purpose: This study aims to explore the contributions of phonological awareness (PA) and morphological awareness (MA) to the reading comprehension skills of Chinese-speaking children with hearing loss (HL) and examine the possible mediation effect of vocabulary knowledge on the relationships of PA and MA with their reading comprehension. Method:…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine if word reading and vocabulary are reciprocally related. Method: We followed a sample of 172 English-speaking Canadian children (82 girls, 90 boys; M[subscript age] = 75.87 months at the first measurement point) from the beginning of Grade 1 until the beginning of Grade 3 and assessed them three…

Domain-specific vocabulary knowledge is an important precursor to overall knowledge acquisition, which is essential to reading and comprehending grade-level texts. There are a number of malleable factors within the classroom that can be shaped by teachers and policy makers, yet additional empirical evidence is needed to uncover and evaluate those…