GREENVILLE — The average person takes approximately 35 exposures to learn new vocabulary.
Research shows that vocabulary words are more effectively retained when using specific techniques, like learning words through repeated exposures in meaningful contexts and connecting words to prior knowledge and experiences.
Faith Smith is a speech language pathologist at the elementary school, and each month she shares a new vocabulary strategy in the Spartan Snapshot with an accompanying video of the strategy in action. Mrs. Smith’s strategies aren’t just for the classroom, you can help your student practice their vocabulary at home with these fun activities.
- Get Real: Look for real-life examples with your target words in newspaper articles, letters, greeting cards, posters, advertisements, songs, recipes, and jokes. A quick Google search will result in hundreds of image results. For example, searching for the word “mighty,” you will find movie posters for Mighty Mouse, Mighty the Armadillo (from Sonic), and Mighty Putty. Show your student the images and see if they can figure out what “mighty” (or your target word) means.
- Most to Least: Have students rank groups of related words based on strength. They can simply list them in order or place them on a continuum line. If you want to get creative, pick up paint sample gradients from your local hardware store and have students write on those. For even more practice, have your students come up with examples or situations in which they would use the target words! Example: mad, angry, furious.
- Word Pictures: Have students provide a visual representation of the target word by drawing a picture within the word, or writing the word in a way that hints at its meaning. Example: write the word “disappear” with varying degrees of pressure, making the first letter the darkest and the last letter the lightest (as if the word is disappearing from the paper).
- Action: Have students select an action that represents the target word. When practicing vocabulary words, have them “act out” each word. This provides a visual representation of the spoken word and helps it stick in their memory longer.
