ABSTRACT
This 52-word excerpt contains 3 of the 22 words that are targeted for vocabulary instruction of the text Akiak (Blake, 1997) in the teacher’s edition that accompanies the fourth-grade textbook of a basal reading program: refuge, burrowed, and whiteout. All three words appear only once in the story and in the entire fourth-grade program. Not only do these words occur infrequently in the program but also they are unlikely to occur with any frequency in typical instructional texts. According to Zeno, Ivens, Millard, and Duwuri’s (1995) analysis of 17.25 million words of school texts, burrowed and whiteout would be expected to appear less than once per one-million-word corpus and refuge three times. Of the 24 words that are highlighted for vocabulary instruction of this text in the teacher’s edition, 11 would be expected to have one or fewer appearances per one-million-word corpus of school texts from kindergarten through college. Furthermore, the number of rare words in this text is not limited to those that have been chosen for instruction. Within this 52-word sample, there are five additional words of this type: blizzard, Galena, mound, snowdrift, and the title and name of the protagonist of the story, Akiak.
