Teaching Vocabulary in Pre-Kindergarten

As part of their Personal Learning Networks a few of our Pre-K teachers are wanting to learn more about teaching vocabulary in Pre-K. In addition, when looking at our C-PALLS+ assessment data, vocabulary is the one area where our students score the lowest. So, doing more research on vocabulary development is a priority for me as well.

In an article I found from Young Children - July 2010, Tanya Christ and X. Christine Wang outline four research-based vocabulary teaching practices. Here they are:

1. provide purposeful exposure to new words,
2. intentionally teach word meanings
3. teach word-learning strategies, and
4. offer opportunities to use newly learned words.

After introducing the four teaching practices, the authors give examples and more detail on how to do each. They conclude that a variety of teaching methods should be used to improve children's vocabularies because having a well-developed vocabulary correlates with greater reading comprehension and overall academic success.