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You can help kids learn vocabulary through read alouds.  Books that you read aloud to your kids will often have more sophisticated vocabulary than books that they can read on their own.  Even when kids can read on their own, reading aloud can expose them to new vocabulary, allow you to model fluent reading and extend their comprehension. 

Here is an interesting article that supports reading aloud and vocabulary development. The article discusses how written language gives kids access to a wide range of language and vocabulary that they might not hear in spoken language. https://edsource.org/2015/study-says-reading-aloud-to-children-more-than-talking-builds-literacy/82045

Lately, we have been reading Charlotte’s Web to Tim as a read aloud at night. He has seen the movie, so he is familiar with the story and characters, but the book has so much more detail and rich vocabulary.  We have been reading a chapter or two a night and we are almost finished with the book. While we are reading, we stop and talk about what is happening in the story and I explain some of the vocabulary.  We have focused on the friendship between Wilbur and Charlotte and what makes Charlotte a good friend. We have also been discussing the difference between Templeton and Charlotte and their reasons in helping Wilbur. A lot of our discussion is prompted by Tim’s questions about what is happening in the story or about the different characters.

The other night, I was reading a chapter and the word timothy was used in a paragraph in the story. The sentence read, “Then the hay would be hoisted, sweet and warm, into the big loft, until the whole barn seemed like a hole bed of timothy and clover.” Since this word is Tim’s name, he was very interested in learning what this word meant. To help Tim figure out what the word timothy meant, we first talked about the meaning of the word clover used in the sentence.

Tim remembered the word clover from St. Patrick’s day and we talked about a four leaf clover and how clover is often seen outside in the grass. Tim made a guess that timothy was a type of plant that grows in the grass outside based on the clues that were given by the author.   We googled the word timothy and I read the definition and showed Tim some images. Our guess was close!

We discovered that timothy is a perennial tall meadow grass. We also realized that we had seen timothy grass before outside in fields or often in spots where the grass is not mowed. When we were leaving a park the next week, Tim pointed out some timothy grass that was growing in the park. He was so proud of himself for using the word timothy and for knowing what the word meant!

Here are some tips to help kids learn vocabulary through read alouds:

• Select a few new vocabulary words in the story. Make sure to focus on just a few and not too many. This can be done by skimming the chapter or book quickly beforehand or it can be done as you read the book to your child. Have your child try to figure out what the meaning is based on the context clues in the story. Reread the sentence before the word, the sentence with the word, and the sentence after the word. You can make a guess based on how the word in used in the story and google the word to figure out the meaning.  Tim enjoyed doing this because it seemed like a game!

• Talk about the book in advance and give your child some background knowledge. You might introduce some new vocabulary.  Before reading Charlotte’s Web, we talked about farms, the types of animals that live on a farm and what they eat. We also talked about cows producing milk for people to drink and chicken producing eggs for people to eat.

• Select a couple of vocabulary words that are important for understanding the main idea of a chapter or a story. For example, in Charlotte’s Web, the words injustice and runt are key words in chapter 1. These words go along with the main idea that Fern is able to convince her father to keep Wilbur.

• Use your new vocabulary words in conversation and in your daily life if the situation arises. Using new vocabulary will help reinforce the meaning and help your child to use the word correctly.

In order to help kids learn new vocabulary through read alouds, make sure to only pick a couple of words central to the main idea of the story, and keep it fun!