The word estimate popped up early in her explanation of the math assignment, and while these young students were not expected to be able to read this word, a discussion ensued rich in the language of mathematics. Students volunteered guessing, testing and tallying as equivalent terms they had learned during a previous discussion of the concept of estimation. In the activities that followed, the students encountered the word tally in print as they read aloud the instructions for the assignment with their teacher. This brief cameo of the intersection of mathematics with literacy instruction illustrates the potential all teachers have for consciously integrating literacy across the curriculum. Building a strong vocabulary in a content area will not only help students to learn key concepts in that domain, but by making the link to print, this instruction can also promote literacy beyond the usual language arts instruction.
All students are language learners in one way or another.
Indeed, in kindergarten both oral language skills and the basics of reading have to be learned. In terms of oral language, by some estimates the vocabularies of elementary students grow by 3,000 new words in each grade. Beyond the level of word learning, these young children are learning to form the structure of stories to make their discourse coherent to a listener. They have also yet to learn the rules for language use, such as when it is permissible to shout out an answer in class and when to listen quietly to the contributions of their teacher or classmates. If those sounds are familiar in the sense that they map onto a known word in the student s vocabulary then reading for meaning is achieved.