Heidi Burnett (4) Words Words Words

Quote: "Nagy, Anderson, and Herman (1987) found that students who read books at their grade level have a 1 in 20 chance of learning the meaning of a word from context. Although that might seem insignificant, if students read 20,000 words a year and learn 1 of every 20 words from context, they will learn 1,000 words, or one third of their annual vocabulary growth. That's significant! How much time does it take to read 20,000 words? Nagy (1998) estimated that if teachers provide 30 minutes of daily reading time, students will learn an additional 1,000 words a year! It's interesting to note that both capable and less capable readers learn from context at about the same rate" (Tompkins, pg. 245)

Comment: I agree with the statement, "That's significant!" I always find statistics interesting. So, to read that students can learn an additional 1,000 words per year if you provide thirty minutes of daily reading time is so interesting to me. I have been taught in a lot of my classes that providing SSR is extremely important to helping students become better readers, and this supports that completely. I think it would be interesting to go back to my elementary school years, and see what the statistics were of me learning to read. I feel like I read a lot as a child, but I wonder how many words I read a year and how many words I learned a year. There is no way I can go back and find this out, but I can make the effort to give my students an appropriate amount of daily reading time in my classroom.

Question: Do you think providing thirty minutes of daily reading can really be that significant? Do you think it will be part of your classroom routine?