A Focus on Vocabulary
The idea that students can only effectively learn 8 to 10 new words a week seemed like it was a rather low number in comparison to the actual amount of new words that students would be exposed to. This is especially true when you consider that each class, which depending on the school’s term system could be anywhere from 4 to 8 in a week, would have its own new concepts and words for students to learn about. This doesn’t even take into account the number of non-‘vocabulary’ type words, the everyday words students are expected to already know and are not explicitly taught as part of the class.
The emphasis on exposure to new words through reading was also a point that caught my attention, because as a student I was always reading everything I could get my hands on, and it opened me up to a huge array of vocabulary that I did not get exposed to at school, or in everyday interaction. When I was in elementary school I remember being told by my teachers to pick out books for silent reading from the library with two conditions: there could be no more than 5 words on the first page that I did not understand, but there had to be at least 1 or 2 new words that I would need to look up or ask someone the meaning of. I think that this sort of guideline worked really well to make sure that students didn’t get too frustrated by a lack of understanding and no longer enjoy reading. It also acted to ensure that students were still challenging themselves.