Intrigued by the vocabulary program we wrote about today? Here is some more food for thought:
• We focused mainly on why vocabulary is a problem for poorer children. Unsurprisingly, it's also a problem for English learners who don't hear English at home at all. Schools sometimes aggravate it by focusing too much on conversational English for new speakers, instead of the more academic language they need to understand textbooks and tests, said Patricia Gandara, a University of California Los Angeles education professor.
"If kids don't get the language of the classroom, they don't understand the lesson," Gandara said.
Gandara believes it can also be problematic when English learners are relabeled as fluent speakers in the early grades, because while they may seem to speak English well, they don't