In a study by Hart and Risley (1995) it was found that children who were scoring high in reading at age 10
were those who had been exposed to a large vocabulary early on. In fact, “by age 3 children in professional families
would have heard more than 30 million words” (Hart & Risley, 1995, p. 132). The study was completed with 42
families. The children were observed every month from 10 months old until three years of age (Hart & Risley, 1995).
Hart and Risley (1995) found that children who were from professional families had larger and better vocabularies. In
a follow-up study, they found that these students had better reading comprehension later in life. According to Hart
and Risley (1995),
The extreme effort and care taken in collecting the data, the large amount of data on each child, and the
considerable number and variety of families observed had rewarded us by revealing robust relationships between
children’s early experience at home and their later accomplishments. (pp. 144-145).
A study by Cunningham and Stanovich (1997) reported the strength of first graders’ vocabulary had a large
impact on their reading comprehension in eleventh grade. In this quantitative study, first grade students were given
several reading tasks; then 10 years later these same students were given follow-up tests. This provided evidence
that vocabulary instruction is important for students to be successful in reading.
Suggested Vocabulary Strategies
The purpose of this article is to provide vocabulary strategies for teachers to utilize to increase student
engagement and reading comprehension. Within the literature, several strategies suggested for the classroom can be
found: Story Impressions, Word of the Day, Predict-O-Gram, Word Detectives, Story Innovation, Word Sort, and
Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy.
Story Impressions. With Story Impressions (Vacca & Vacca, 2008), the teacher selects important words or short
phrases from a text, writes them on the board in the order they are used in the text, and asks students to create a
story using all of the listed words. The students then share their stories with one another and compare their stories
to the text from which the words came (Vacca & Vacca, 2008). This strategy follows one of Curtis and Longo’s (2001)
five principles, which allows students to see and use vocabulary words in a range of contexts.
Word of the Day. The Word of the Day (Gunning, 2004) strategy is used to activate student interest in new
vocabulary like Curtis and Longo (2001) suggest: to “introduce and activate word meanings” (para. 11). The teacher
puts new vocabulary words from a text or unit of study on large posters and hangs them around the room. When
students walk in, they see bright, interesting words and begin wondering what they mean. Throughout the study of
the words, the students are able to add information to the posters that will help them remember their meaning
(Gunning, 2004).
Predict-O-Gram. A strategy that can get students comparing words and also reinforce vocabulary is Predict-O-Gram
(Gunning, 2004). In this strategy, students work together to predict which vocabulary words will be used to describe
different parts of the story, for example, plot, setting, characters, or story problem.
Word Detectives. Word Detectives (Ainslie, 2000), which could be modified for any grade level, encourages students
to find and seek out the meaning of a new word. Basically, all students are Word Detectives and the vocabulary
words are “Suspects”