The vocabulary gap can have a serious impact on your child's learning experience, especially beginning in the fourth grade. James A. Duplass, author of Teaching Elementary Social Studies, explains based on the 2003 research of Hart and Risley:

"There is a 30,000-word gap that develops between elementary school-aged children from professional families and children from families on welfare, with working-class families' children falling roughly in the middle."

Duplass explains that the fourth grade (age 8-10 or middle childhood) is the time when children must read so much "informational text." Understanding this content-specific text, or informational text, is essential for understanding the academic subjects. Struggling readers get behind their peers due to a vocabulary gap. They spend most of their time just deciphering the words on the page in a textbook like a science reader.

Parents can use the same strategies used by teachers to build their child's vocabulary in the home. Beyond the strategy of conversing often with a child, especially before kindergarten, there are other strategies. The most important strategy is to get your child to read every day at home. Like teachers, involved parents provide support in reading in science, math, reading, social studies and literature before, during, and after the child tackles independent readings.

Here are four strategies to try with your child:

1. Go over vocabulary such as new math concepts, formulas, or properties before your child reads and completes written exercises at the end of the section. Text boxes and pictures may help more than looking up vocabulary words in the textbook's glossary.

2. Teach your child to keep note cards in a box or zipper bag for each chapter of a subject where reading is difficult. Memorizing definitions does not help a child to retain concepts after a test, but note cards can include notes and pictures and be stored for future use.

3. Help your child apply new information, including vocabulary, rules, and concepts in a real-life context. For example, your child can use the home computer to research a topic of interest related to the academic content. If your child likes whales, he or she can understand more about marine ecosystems by studying the whale's role in various food chains around the world.

4. Use the Internet for finding specific images that will help your child understand difficult words (or informational text). For example, a third grade text might discuss reptiles. Searching online for reptiles will yield thousands of images. When your child reads captions on educational websites underneath pictures of reptiles, he or she may understand more fully what difficult words mean and how words relate to concepts.

At http://childrenlearningonline.net we have created some Web-based reading exercises for younger children that will motivate and help them to accelerate their learning process.

Your child will spend a lot of time learning new information at school. If you search online for teacher tips, you can try some strategies without a background in education. Some strategies are based on research, and other strategies are based on common sense and supported by research.