Vocabulary and Reading Strategies

Helli Families,

I am most of the way through a new round of reading evaluations and with few exceptions I am very pleased with the improvement that students have made this year. Many who were hesitant readers, had trouble recalling what they read and/or had trouble inferring information have gained in confidence and improved their recall and reading comprehension. It is wonderful to see all that hard work bear fruit!

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, single biggest need in terms of English skills and abilities is the need for greater receptive and expressive vocabulary. What do I mean?

Receptive vocabulary is the term used for the words that we understand when we encounter them.

Expressive vocabulary are the words that we can generate on our own in a given language.


Often we notice that students' receptive vocabulary is larger than their expressive vocabulary. Students are usually able to make meaning in context, but when the information is sketchy or the text complex, they are simply unable to figure out what a word means and at times this makes it hard or impossible to fully understand what they are reading or hearing.

Examples we have come across lately include nouns like attic, headlight, twilight, dusk, and webbed, but happens as often with other parts of speech.

Over the next few weeks your child will be coming home with vocabulary exercises. Please have a look at your child's work and help them name their world.

Warmly,
Kathy Napier

TeacherTube

Our class was visited a few weeks ago by Dale Mackenzie, one of the people in charge of ibook implementation in our school board. He interviewed me and some of the students, and filmed our class working on various projects (ComicLife and our Wiki). He put together this video together.