The present study investigates Head Start teachers’ gesturing practices as a means for bolstering children’s word-learning during shared book reading sessions. Teachers used an evidence-based curriculum supported by professional development. Using multimodal analysis of thirty-three videos of shared book reading, we coded five types of gestures: iconic, beat, representational, deictic, and behavioral. Our analyses controlled for children’s nonverbal intelligence and linguistic input from the teacher and the text read aloud. Results from multi-level models indicate teachers gesture frequently, and that total gestures and meaning focused gestures are related to children’s end-of-year receptive vocabulary scores as measured by the PPVT. (author abstract)