I recently wrote about ways to encourage children to sit still for a story or book reading. And today I read a discussion on LinkedIn about the vocabulary author’s use when writing children’s books. Both reminded me that I’ve been told my daughter’s vocabulary, especially when she was 2 and 3 years old, seemed older than her age. I attribute it to two practices. First, we never talked down to her using baby-talk words. We had conversations with her, and used synonyms for new words if she didn’t understand.

Second, we’ve read a large variety of books to her and with her. We’ve followed certain characters, authors, illustrators, and series. Whenever we’ve come upon a new word, we used several techniques. We might automatically provide a synonym in the same sentence. If we could recall something from her past experiences that would help her learn the word, we would stop and help her recall that experience and make the connection. It could have been another book, somewhere we’d visited, a television show, or a conversation. Another technique we used was to stop and ask if she knew what the word meant. If she said no, we explained. And now, as we read nonfiction science books, we can use word parts to determine the word’s meaning. She wouldn’t be able to do that herself right now, yet I know it will give her a headstart on that skill when she encounters it in her schooling.

Doing these things that frequently, helped her learn that it was okay not to know all of the words she read, and that there were ways to figure them out. She frequently stops us now to ask what a word means.

The same techniques can be done with a class of children. Some of the chapter books that I loved to read to my students dealt with situations with which they had no experience. I’m thinking of The Indian in the Cupboard and knowledge of cowboys and indians. I stopped when needed to explain, to enable them to follow the story.

We want our children to read books that they can experience success when reading. Yet we also want them to continue growing in their language and knowledge. We can help by purposefully making connections for them.