An enriched vocabulary is a consistent part of day-to-day life in every GE environment. Words describing higher-order thinking, words from the literature of our culture, words spoken by learned men and women, and words pertinent to specific academic subjects – all pour into use in the Great Expectations environment. Having fluent use of a large erudite vocabulary boosts learners’ confidence and competence in many ways.

Particularly urgent in the lives of today’s learners is the need to become thinkers. When Benjamin Bloom organized his understanding of the levels of thinking, he used words that would clarify thinking into categories. These categories of words build a framework for learning and for producing work that reflects high-level thinking. Learning these descriptive words and learning to do the thinking help learners with projects, assignments in every subject, and daily life. Analyzing, predicting, synthesizing, comparing – all of these ways of thinking, and many more, serve learners well.