When School Sounds Like a Different Language

One of the easiest ways to lose students in school is to assume they already speak the language of school. A lot of our students do not. By the middle years, texts get denser, vocabulary gets more abstract, and the language of school starts expecting students to explain, compare, infer, justify, and synthesize, often all before lunch. For students who come from literacy-rich homes, this language may feel familiar; it’s easier for them. For students from homes with fewer books, less time, more stress, or who have been diagnosed with or have potential learning disabilities or have parents who struggled deeply in school themselves, school literacy can feel like being handed a map in a language they were never taught to read. Literacy growth is shaped not only by instruction but also by access, exposure, and the kinds of literacy experiences students have outside school (Graves, 2016; Duke & Cartwright, 2021).

In my own teaching context, many students come from households where education has not been encouraged consistently, and many also come from homes where parents had painful school experiences of their own. Those parents’ experiences matter regarding our students’ experience. Not because families do not care, but because support at home can look very different when adults are working multiple jobs, carrying their own school wounds, or struggling with reading and writing themselves. Parent literacy levels affect how confidently adults can support school tasks, summer reading, and everyday literacy routines (First Literacy, n.d.).

Why Vocabulary Is Really About Access

Students cannot fully access a text if they do not understand the words found within it. Graves (2016) argues that effective vocabulary instruction includes rich language experiences, direct teaching of important words, word-learning strategies, and word consciousness. In practical classroom terms, that means we need to teach key words explicitly, revisit them often, and help students notice how words work across reading, discussion, and writing. The bigger struggle for me is making classes accessible when I have a class full of students who struggle to attend school on a regular basis. Infrequent attendance results in gaps of literacy instruction and, therefore, literacy skill development.

Genre Should Not Be Secret Teacher Knowledge

Genre matters for the same reason that morphology is important. When students learn roots, prefixes, and suffixes, they gain tools for unlocking meaning rather than waiting for someone else to translate everything for them (Apel & Werfel, 2014; Henry, 2019). When they learn genre, they learn how to navigate the world.

Students do not magically know how a lab experiment works, how a historical argument is structured, or how a narrative builds tension. Sedita (2022) reminds us that text structure is part of explicit writing instruction, and that students benefit when we make genres visible rather than treating them like secret teacher knowledge. If we name the purpose, features, and signal words of a genre, we give students a better shot at both reading and writing it.

Academic Language Without Shame

Academic language matters too, I think this is where we have to be especially thoughtful. Teaching academic language should not mean that we treat students’ home language or everyday speech as being wrong (we don’t want to demean or undervalue our students’ lived experiences and cultures). It means helping them add another language register to their toolkit. They need academic language skills that support them when comparing, explaining, arguing, and summarizing texts because school and the professional world will ask them to. Sentence frames, mentor texts, oral rehearsal, and structured discussion can all help make academic language more accessible and fluid for students (Sedita, 2022; Graham, 2020).

When Home Support Is Limited, School Has to Step In

For students who do not get strong literacy support at home is essential to make academic language visible and usable. It must provide them with the space to learn and practice such language use in a safe space – this isn’t always as easy as it might sound.

Reading Rockets describes literacy-rich environments as classrooms where materials, talk, labels, books, and purposeful instruction all work together to support speaking, reading, and writing. Those environments matter especially for students who may have had less exposure to literacy outside school, because they make language impossible to miss and provide them with an environment to access and use it. The environment must put words, genres, and print into daily classroom life rather than save them for worksheets and quizzes alone (The Access Center, n.d.).

Families are super valuable here. Reading aloud, everyday literacy routines, and visible reading at home support vocabulary, background knowledge, and positive reading habits (Croft, 2021; CCCF, n.d.). Support does not have to look like a parent confidently helping with a five-paragraph essay. Support can be conversation, listening, shared reading, routines, and showing that language matters; most importantly, support can look like parents consistently encouraging their student(s) to regularly attend school.

What This Means for My Classroom

For me, this means I cannot assume students are coming in already fluent in school literacy. I need to teach the language of school clearly, directly, and respectfully. That means teaching vocabulary before expecting comprehension. It means making genre visible. It means giving students access to academic language without making them feel like the way they speak at home is somehow wrong (dialect and other languages are culturally valuable). It also means remembering that for some students, school may be the most stable literacy-rich environment they have. That is not a small responsibility.

What to take away from this all

If we want students to become literate, we cannot just hand them texts and hope for the best. We need to teach the language of school clearly, directly, and respectfully. Vocabulary. Genre. Academic language. Not just as gatekeeping tools, but as access tools. For a lot of kids, school may be the place where that door to literacy gets opened for the first time, allowing them to have a glimpse at a broader perspective.

References

Apel, K., & Werfel, K. (2014). Using morphological awareness instruction to improve written language skills. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 45(4), 251–260.

CCCF. (n.d.). Parents as partners in reading. Canadian Child Care Federation.

Croft, M. L. (2021, November 11). Partnering with parents to improve student literacy. Knowledge Quest.

Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the Simple View of Reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25–S44.

First Literacy. (n.d.). Parent literacy: Impact on children’s success and summer learning.

Graham, S. (2020). The sciences of reading and writing must become more fully integrated. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S35–S44.

Graves, M. F. (2016). The vocabulary book: Learning and instruction. Teachers College Press.

Henry, M. K. (2019). Morphemes matter: A framework for instruction. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, Spring 2019, 23–26.

Sedita, J. (2022). The Writing Rope: A framework for explicit writing instruction in all subjects. Brookes.

The Access Center. (n.d.). Literacy-rich environments. Reading Rockets.