SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Word Power

When it comes to academic preparation, one of the biggest - and most crucial - differences among young children is the size of their vocabularies. To say the same thing another way, the number of words a child knows is closely related to his or her IQ. Children who start school with impoverished vocabularies are at a terrible disadvantage. Though they may be perfectly capable of learning new things, their limited vocabularies mean that they fail to learn at the same rate as other children. The average child learns about 3,000 new words a year. So what can parents and teachers do to make sure their students continue to add at least eight or nine new words to their vocabularies every day? It’s not really rocket science!

• Expose the students to lots of different experiences and ideas.
• Have frequent conversations with them, not speaking down.
• Read to them.
• Teach them to read when they are preschoolers. 
• Explicitly teach them new vocabulary, for example using Internet games such as the ones here or using vocabulary workbooks such as these.