A visit to one reading team client, Marshall High School Word of the Day is a practice that trains several spotlights on one new vocabulary word each day. Done Chicago-style, the principal reads it, defines it and uses it in a sentence over the public address system. Teachers post it in their rooms.
Schools administer monthly quizzes on the words and give prizes to the highest scorers.
Even when schools do all this, Word of the Day has both detractors and advocates among the ranks of reading experts. Within five more encounters, the word and its conventional meaning are usually firmly established in the mind of the reader. Other educators who share this view add that when reading material isn't instantly interesting or comprehensible, it's the teacher's job to build context by activating students' prior knowledge of the topic. With regard to vocabulary, that means having students identify difficult words themselves and pool their knowledge to get the meaning. Ann Marie Longo, director of the Boys Town Reading Center, argues that teens can't use context effectively when their vocabularies are limited.