Word Study

"Word knowledge is highly related to comprehension." This is as told by Yopp and Yopp in their article, Ten Important Words Plus: A Strategy for Building Word Knowledge. Yopp and Yopp believe that the degree of ones vocabulary is affected and built up by three main things:

1. Wide Reading

     2.  Explicit Instruction of words and word-learning strategies


     3.  Establishment of an environment that promotes word consciousness

To know words means to the reader can better understand the text. This seems like common knowledge, but the tricky part is applying this concept to gain an actual result. This is a widely addressed issue, as spoken of also in Cunningham and Cunningham's piece on Making Words.

Also mentioned in Cunningham and Cunningham's piece, it is stated that children's developmental spelling in kindergarten or beginning of first grade to be a strong predictor of their reading achievement by the end of the year. Also mentioned was the study of Nelson did in 1990 that left observers with the result that early exposure to phonics accelerates students development of correct short vowel spelling.

These results once again convince me of the importance teachers play in students education. Especially those who teach elementary education. In my classroom, to help readers achieve this, I would love to have a designated reading corner with a couch or bean bags and a lamp or two. I believe setting apart a space specifically for reading would encourage my students, even those who struggle with reading, to give it a try, thus hopefully creating space for them to widen their vocabulary to expand their word knowledge. The pictures throughout this post are some ideas I have found for inspiration of what that corner could look like.