Vocabulary Lessons

I found the article from Blachowicz and Fisher to be very interesting and insightful. It gave tons of great activities and ideas on how to help teachers build their students vocabulary and an appreciation for it. While reading this article it made me think about if there is any vocabulary instruction in the classroom I'm currently working in and I could recall very little instances of vocabulary instruction. I was surprised when I reflected on this because vocabulary obtains a strong connection between children's reading comprehension. One of the quotes from the article I found to be very powerful from Blachowicz and Fisher (2004) was, "Just as a house needs a strong foundation, so reading comprehension depends on a strong base of oral language and concept development." It also stated a research study on how implementing a high-literacy classrooms can help those students living in low-literacy homes. It is clear that vocabulary instruction and high literacy environments are very important. If vocabulary is so crucial to children's reading skills, why do you think in many classrooms there is little vocabulary lessons or instruction?
The last thing that I really liked about this article was the idea of a "word wall" where children can add words that they hear in books, conversation, television, or their daily experiences. This is an activity that I would love to try in my classroom. I think it is a great inexpensive and valuable way to implement vocabulary instruction even if I have little time to implement direct vocabulary instruction in my curriculum.