Language

I just finished reading an EXTREMELY interesting book by Elaine Garan (link to book)on politics, education reform, and reading. 
A lot of reading programs used in schools now have a heavy emphasis on phonics, i.e. breaking each word down into individual phonemes.  
One of the sections spent a lot of time looking at phonics instruction. She mentions a study on how we read that found our eyes track large chunks of text, we don't read letter by letter (as suggested by a lot of previous research). That being said, while phonics instruction is an important skill for reading, the heavy emphasis on drilling students on words letter by letter separates the vocabulary we are teaching from any context and meaning.

Another interesting point presented by Garan, one we've actually discussed in my reading education class, is that a lot of the spelling rules we go over with children have not one, but multiple exceptions (One two vowels go walking, the first does the talking.....except when you're using read (pronounced reed or red?) or tears (as in crying or rips?) There are a lot of confusing words for many of the rules we're asking students to remember. 

With those points in mind, a useful approach to developing students (k-5) vocabulary is to present them with a word wall. You start off giving your students a set of letters, and present them with a starter letter. Students work with the teacher to build as many words as they can with their letters. The teacher then asks students to help her organize the words into categories, based on spelling, tense, definition etc. The teacher can then focus on the spelling "rule" she wants to examine and hosts an open discussion with her students. This method is engaging (we practiced it in my reading education class, I thought it was fun) and gives students a lot of opportunities to adjust and explore their understanding of written language. It also actively shows them how words are built and written, an important skill for many younger students.