Intended for use with grades three and four, this curriculum unit developed by the Oregon Elementary English Project attempts to (1) develop an interest in, respect for, and curiosity about words; (2) expose students to the concept that when we know a word we know its meaning, pronunciation, and relationship to other words; (3) build language…

A study investigated the effect of properties of words and texts on the incidental learning of word meanings during normal reading. Subjects--352 students in third, fifth, and seventh grades--read either expository or narrative passages selected from grade-level textbooks, and after six days were tested on their knowledge of difficult words from…