That Book is Too Hard…or Is It?

Here's a question: What kinds of books do you expose your students to? Are they books that expand their world knowledge? Are they books that introduce new vocabulary? If so, you are on the right track for supporting the literacy growth of your students. If not, stick with me for a minute. There are some really good reasons to do this.

2 Good Reasons

Here's the firstone: 80% of the words we know we learn through incidental exposure. This means that hearing new words is one of the best and fastest ways to grow a vocabulary. Exposing our students to books that may currently be beyond them (and their ability to decode independently) is important. Let's make sure we do it!

Here's the second reason: it helps with comprehension! Knowledge of the world plays a key role in understanding what we read. Without it, our students struggle to build the mental scaffold they need to function academically. Where we used to think that we didn't support comprehension until students could decode independently, now we know better. Today is a good day to start!

Give it a Go!

Great! Now, where can you find books that expose students to new words and build world knowledge? Check out Boardmaker Activities-to-Go. Within each unit you will find books about some of the most popular life skills, science, and social studies topics written at three levels of difficulty. When you download a unit, be sure to look at ALL the books and challenge yourself and your student to explore a book that is just a bit more difficult than those you are used to. You might be surprised…