UNKNOWN WORDS IN TEXT

Jim Trelease, the read aloud expert, says that children hear "rare" words only in books. Rare words, right like seque or deliterious, but "parka."

The other day as I was reading Ralph S. Mouse to the class, this word came up. In the story, kids were putting their parkas in their cubbies and so I asked "what is a parka?" No one knew! The guesses were "glue" or some other supply that kids were putting away.

This is a perfect example of how meaning can get lost in text when kids read. I am almost certain that all the olders and many of the youngers would have been able to figure out how to say the word "parka" but none knew what it meant. Luckily, I asked and cleared up the misconception. It was an important word in this story because Ralph was going to school in the pocket of a boy's parka. I think most kids might have eventually figured out that it was something the boy was wearing, but...

This is probably the reason that research shows that it is not the reading aloud to kids that supports high achievement, but rather the conversation that accompanies the read aloud-conversation between adult and child.

Mary Ann