Today’s news comes to us from the Department of Education. Here is the headline from The Wall Street Journal: “Students Fall Flat in Vocabulary Test.”

As you know, schools get traditionally blamed for results like these; but from the point of view of both educators and current educational research, the real problem stems from the early years. They are indeed the learning years, the real time that children develop a solid educational foundation.

The focus, therefore, goes to whomever spends the most interactional time with your little one and what they actually do. While it may sound like it is something specific, it is actually related to yesterday’s Wednesday Evening Wine tip: Three Musts for Language Development!

Just as you can understand the written word on the level you can verbally understand it, so it is for your child. Leslie Russell, a reading specialist in Virginia said that vocabulary scores could be improved if students were more immersed in high quality language.

Here’s an important thought from David Driscoll, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the National Association of Educational Policy, “Without a strong vocabulary, any child’s ability to read and to learn suffers dramatically.”

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