In the primary grades, it is important that learners know the meanings of the words they encounter as they learn to read and write. For instance, young learners may have a harder time reading or sorting words that share the -og ending if they only know the meanings of dog and log, but not of bog, cog, hog, jog, nog, or slog. So, teaching that spelling pattern also offers a great chance to teach some new vocabulary. 

Hearing and reading words in rich contexts supports word learning for all ages of students. But younger students are especially dependent on hearing and speaking new words.

As students get older, their vocabularies grow each year, adding less frequent and more technical words. In the middle grades, students may be able to reproduce definitions of these new vocabulary words for a test, but without deeply understanding the words. Students who have had limited exposure to words develop limited meanings for them. For example, ‘substitute means a teacher’ or ‘interpret means say a Spanish sentence in English.’ These are the grades when depth of vocabulary as well as breadth becomes an important target of instruction."

For students working below grade level, the strategies are essentially similar to grade level strategies. These students may simply need more: they need more words addressed, but with more supports like those offered to ELs and more explicit and scaffolded instruction.