Vocabulary Primary classrooms need to be "word-rich" places. The aim is to establish an environment that builds rich and varied connections among words for children. The more words children understand and the deeper their knowl- edge of those words, the bigger the payoff as they go through both elementary and secondary schools. Junko Yokota and William H. Teale, "Beginning Reading and Writing Perspectives on Instruction" It is important for teachers to expose children to rich vocabulary beginning in early childhood classes. Under standing the meaning of many words helps support reading comprehension. The kindergarten children Barbara taught could explain words such as escape, real, and energy because she did not teach such words in isolation-the words were always relevant to what the class was studying at the time, which made them more learnable. "Because most vocabu lary is learned from context, making it a regular practice to read aloud to students from well-chosen pieces of prose and poetry, both fiction and nonfiction, provides a gold mine for building word consciousness" (Graves & Watts-Taffe 2008, 187). The children used the words from the raps in their