Some children come to school with a smaller vocabulary than their peers. If children do not have knowledge of the meaning of the words they read in texts, they will fail to comprehend those texts and struggle to keep up with their peers. This is critical because the link between vocabulary and comprehension is very clear (Sticht et al., 1974, as cited in Vadasy & Nelson, 2012). If teachers do not intervene when students are in the early grades, we see that those children who know more words learn additional words more quickly, and subsequently, other children could continue to struggle with reading (Stanovich, 1986). Consequently, some children struggle with reading even more when they enter the upper elementary grades where they can fall into what is referred to as the "fourth-grade slump" when children are beginning to encounter words and word meanings that are increasingly challenging (Chall et al., 1990, p. 1). The author discusses the importance of teaching vocabulary and what vocabulary instruction can look like in the early grades to combat this challenge.