Working in a rural Virginia elementary school, I found that one of the issues my students were having was a fundamental deficit in vocabulary language. It seemed that several students had the reading skills and strategies, but their lack of vocabulary knowledge prevented them from finding success on the reading tests that simulated the Virginia English SOL test, which is the standardized test that 3rd grade and up take each year. Obviously, I don't want to "teach to the test," but I also don't want to set my students up for failure either.
To combat this issue there were a few things we did this past school year.