“It’s always a bit of a struggle to get the words right, whether we’re a Hemingway or a few fathoms below his level.”  Rene J. Cappon

Yes I often struggle with finding just the right word but now and again I surprise myself. If we were to do a PMI on the Slice of Life challenge, one of the ‘interestings’ for me is how occasionally a word will end up on the page that I am not even certain I have used in the correct context. (I have had to actually use a resource to check, just like we encourage the students to do) So how do I ‘know’ these words to be able to use them correctly.  How did my son know at age 9 to say “Look at that fox skulking home,” accurately describe the way the animal moved off the road.

 There is a plethora of research on building vocabulary. Some, like the role oral context has, is not new.  The research that surprises me most is that which suggests reading doesn’t play the role I once thought. “In terms of learning new words in the course of reading, research shows that it does occur but in small increments” (Beck, McKeown, Kucan). They go on to say calculations of how many words are learned from reading overestimate what occurs for many students. I must confess this initially did cause a dissonance with my previous thinking, forcing me to dig deeper.

So reading may not be the omnipotent vocabulary builder I once thought it to be.  However, I think what reading does is provide us with a reservoir from which we can draw from when writing. It is not enough for us to help students fill their reservoir through direct vocabulary instruction, or wide reading or even immersion in rich oral language, we must also build their capacity to draw from the reservoir when they need to. Pearl Strachan said “…words have more power than atom bombs.” We must help students unleash some of this power.