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A group of words, labeled the core vocabulary, can be expected to be prominent across all texts. Scholarship made possible by digital databases of words and new analytic systems has shown that approximately 2,500 morphological families account for most of the words in texts—an average of 91.5% of all words in the Common Core State Standards exemplars from kindergarten through College and Career Ready. The rare vocabulary of texts is so extensive and varied that, without a foundation in the core vocabulary, students are likely to struggle with the meanings of rare words. Words are in the core vocabulary because they represent critical concepts, are part of morphological or word families that share a root word, and are often versatile in their meaning and function. The author describes the semantic, morphological, and multiple‐meaning knowledge represented by these 2,500 word families and ways in which teachers can foster these proficiencies.

The importance of teacher read‐alouds in language teaching and learning has been known for years, but we know very little about how older English learners with limited English skills can benefit from this practice. The author shares how interactive read‐alouds with picture books can be designed to help emerging college learners of English as a foreign language develop word inference ability and become more independent word learners. The processes of selecting a picture book and target words for the practice and implementation of the four phases of a read‐aloud in a beginning‐level freshman English class in Taiwan are described. Findings suggest that interactive picture book read‐alouds can be a pleasurable and effective instructional practice for giving older emerging English learners tools that enable them to internalize the use of context and prior knowledge to draw inferences and further apply them independently when they confront unknown vocabulary as they read on their own.

This article on word‐learning strategies describes a theory‐ and research‐based set of procedures for teaching students to use word‐learning strategies—word parts, context clues, the dictionary, and a combined strategy—to infer the meanings of unknown words. The article begins with a rationale for teaching word‐learning strategies, particularly to students with vocabularies smaller than those of many students their age. After this, the authors provide a definition of word‐learning strategies, a review of the most relevant research, and a brief description of the effects of the program. Next are descriptions of the curriculum, the instruction, and key aspects of the authors’ approach. The article concludes with a note stressing the importance of following initial instruction on word‐learning strategies with reviews, reminders, and prompts to use them over time and a description of two aspects of the program identified as particularly important by the teachers the authors worked with.

The authors explore how the use of sarcasm in an urban high school English classroom fostered critical language awareness and positive relationships among diverse classroom participants. The guiding research question was, What were the social-pedagogical functions of sarcasm in this classroom? Drawing on interactional sociolinguistics and pragmatics, the authors found that sarcasm was used to construct a sense of belonging, which supported building trusting relationships and complex language learning.

Decoding, building fluency, and exploring word and sentence meanings are important elements of literacy instruction in elementary classrooms. Shared literacy experiences provide opportunities for teachers to engage students in meaningful reading experiences. This article describes a quick four‐step process for conducting close sentence reading, a shared literacy experience focused on decoding and comprehending short excerpts of challenging text. Classroom examples and a sample excerpt and chart are included.

Young children gain emergent literacy skills during the preschool years. Oral language development is enhanced as students engage in dialogue with teachers and peers. The use of topical vocabulary is linked to greater gains in students’ vocabulary development. Students acquire emergent writing skills as they participate in spontaneous and guided writing activities. Teachers play an essential role in promoting literacy development through intentionally designing literacy‐rich environments and learning experiences. Literacy‐related play can be enhanced when teachers guide students’ use of content‐specific props. The Entomologist Tool Kit is an example of a prop that jump‐started preschoolers’ vocabulary, oral language, and emergent writing development in a preschool classroom. This article gives steps for replicating this prop.

The authors examined the influence of context meaning consistency on incidental vocabulary acquisition during reading. Context meaning consistency refers to informational context that reflected the same meaning (i.e., consistent) or different meanings (i.e., inconsistent) across two self-paced reading sessions for a given item (both sessions on the same day). The first sentence of each sentence-pair item contained informational context, and the second sentence contained a target word (novel target or known control). Acquisition was assessed via surprise memory tests given right after the reading sessions (immediate) and again approximately a week later (delayed). Inconsistent context was generally associated with inflated reading times and less recall than consistent context, and retention was particularly low when the first encounter with the novel target was during the second reading session. Self-paced reading times were also particularly inflated in the second reading session for items in which readers encountered the novel word version of the target for the first time (i.e., known control encountered during the first reading session instead). Acquisition was facilitated most for novel targets that were presented during both reading sessions in consistent meaning context, but suffered the most in the case of consistent context and the novel target initially encountered in the second session. When presented with different meanings for the same novel target across self-paced reading sessions (inconsistent context condition), the intended meaning for the initial presentation was more likely to remain in memory.

Vocabulary instruction is a key component of reading comprehension but is often not addressed sufficiently in classrooms. The authors worked with a team of fifth‐grade teachers in professional development targeted to learning instructional strategies for developing students' vocabularies. In this article, the authors share two strategies that the teachers said their students found most engaging: the Graffiti Wall and the Picture Word Wall. Both strategies were the teachers' adaptations of strategies shared with them and were built on best practices from literacy research, including explicit vocabulary instruction, a gradual release of responsibility, using pictures to support retention, ongoing review, word learning strategies, universal participation and accountability, encouraging student autonomy, using challenging and interesting texts, and fostering collaboration. This article describes the two strategies so that any teacher could try them tomorrow.