language to take advantage of the word superiority effect. Teachers must devote most of the class hours in grades 1–2 to reading, giving lots of practice and feedback to students, and teaching vocabulary so that children can comprehend as speed increases. Interesting stories in simple language are likely to help struggling students persevere (Abadzi, 2006). Other research has found that in grades 2 and 3 greater fluency growth is positively associated with small-group instruction, and negatively associated with teaching phonics. Taylor et al (2002) found that children in first grade grew more in comprehension and fluency when their teachers asked more high-level questions than other teachers. Analysis was done using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) to focus on classroom variables. Teachers who were more often observed teaching their students in small groups in first grade also had students who showed larger gains in fluency during the year.

Two instructional approaches have typically been used to teach reading fluency. Guided, repeated oral reading encourages students to read passages orally with systematic and explicit guidance and feedback from the teacher. The other approach is independent silent reading, which encourages students to read silently on their own, inside and outside the classroom, with minimal guidance or feedback. The NPR research (2000) concluded that “guided repeated oral reading procedures that included guidance from teachers, peers, or parents had a significant and positive impact on word recognition, fluency, and comprehension across a range of grade levels” (p.12). In contrast, they were unable to find a positive relationship between independent-reading programs and improvements in reading achievement, including fluency.

_Vocabulary_ should be an ongoing part of the instructional day in kindergarten through third grade, and taught in the context of reading activities (Abadzi, 2006, p. 42). It has long been known that the growth of word knowledge is slow and incremental, requiring multiple exposures to words. One doesn’t just learn a word’s meaning and then have the word. One gradually learns the word’s denotations and connotations and its modes of use little by little over many, many language experiences (Hirsch Jr., 2003; Nagy & Scott, 2000). Armbruster, Lehr, and Osborne (2003) concluded that children learn the meanings of most words indirectly, through everyday experiences with oral and written language: by engaging daily in oral language, by listening to adults read to them, or by reading extensively on their own. Children who were exposed to greater communicational experiences –e.g. those who have better educated parents, are often read aloud to, attend preschool programs– naturally learned more words and have an advantage over those who did not have that chance. As a result, children arrive to school with vastly different vocabularies: children in middle and upper class urban settings enter primary school with a useable vocabulary that is several times larger than that of rural children. For example, research in Ecuador showed that six year-olds in the poorest quartile had and average score of 63 in the _Test de Vocabulario en Imagenes Peabody_ (TVIP), while their peers in the wealthier quartile had scored above 100 (Paxson & Schady, 2005).

In vocabulary acquisition, a small early advantage grows into a much bigger one with time: a high-performing first-grader knows about twice as many words as a low-performing one and, as these students go through the next grades, the differential gets magnified (Graves, Brunetti, & Slater, 1982). By 12th grade, the high performer knows about four times as many words as the low performer (Smith, 1941). Thus, if explicit vocabulary development is not included, rural, poor children will continue to be disadvantaged relative to urban, middle class children.

Students also learn vocabulary through direct instruction, such as key word, repeated multiple readings, rich contexts, computer based and pre-instruction, among others. Research suggest that explicit vocabulary instruction methods improve vocabulary knowledge and reading 8