What is important is that children should enjoy their reading enough to want to read more. The other thing that is important is that they should become better and better at getting meaning from context, for that is the supreme skill of a good reader. The trouble with telling children what words mean, or asking them to ask the dictionary to tell them, is that they don't get a chance to figure out the meaning of the word. Figuring out what you don't know or aren't sure of is the greatest intellectual skill of all.
