Vocabulary

Strategies to support vocabulary development

Some of these ideas have been taken with permission from handouts by Anne Locke, Department of Human Communication Sciences, University of Sheffield.

• Choose key words

  Pick a few key words that the child needs to know for the current class topic. These should be words that are important for the child’s learning. Write them on a board, in the child’s book or on a sticky note on the fridge at home.

• Build vocabulary up step by step

  Add new words gradually, starting with easier ones and moving on to harder ones. You can try using the tiered vocabulary approach, created by Beck and McKeown, to introduce words in a structured way.

  • Tier 1 words: These are familiar every day words which a child would come across in normal everyday conversation.
  • Tier 2 words: These are more complex words, but are still frequently used. Children are likely to come across these words in all topic and subject areas.
  • Tier 3 words: These are subject-specific words that are used less frequently.

  Using 'space' as an example, tier 1 words could include 'sun' and 'moon'. Tier 2 words may include 'big', 'black' and 'far'. Tier 3 words may include 'galaxy' and 'universe'.

  

• Pre-teach words

  Let children talk about the new key words and concepts before they come up in lessons. This helps them to prepare for the questions, explanations and discussions.

• Use multi-sensory reinforcement

  Try to introduce new words, ideas or concepts in different ways to make it more meaningful for the child.

  • Visual: show real objects, colour, pictures, gestures or signs. For example, when talking about the desert, use real world objects like sand, and pictures of camels and lizards.
  • Tactile: let the child feel shapes, materials or practice the movements.
  • Attributes: talk about shape, size and colour.
  • Association: link words to other ideas, such as "it goes in the fridge with the other food".

• Create classroom labels

  Create a display board for the topic you are working on and include key words. For example, you could put a display board near the water play area and include labelled pictures of:

  • the names of equipment used, such as water wheel, funnel and tube
  • verbs, such as pour, float and sink
  • adjectives, such as full, empty, half full, big, heavy and plastic

• Use new words in context

  Show the new words in real-life situations whenever possible. Use real objects or pictures and, if possible, include practical activities such as visits and experiments. For example, making a circuit can encourage the child to learn the new words and to explore complicated ideas.

• Revisit, reinforce and repeat

  Children need to hear and use key words in lots of different ways across their learning. The more times the child hears and sees the word used in context, the more likely they are to remember, understand and use the word.

• Help children store words

  Support the child to learn new words and store them in an organised way. Children need to develop their understanding of the meaning of the word and how it relates to others, as well as how the word sounds and what it looks like. Introduce new words by:

  • saying what it is: “This is a desert” and show a picture
  • describing it: “Deserts are places that do not get much rain, so it is very dry. They are usually covered in sand, rocks and sometimes plants. It is usually very hot”
  • saying the location: “There are deserts in many continents of the world, like the Sahara Desert in Africa”
  • saying the initial sound: “Desert starts with ‘d’”
  • saying the length of word: “it is a longer word"
  • saying the amount of syllables: “It has 2 syllables: de-sert”

• Try categorising activities

  Choose a category like transport, food, clothes, animals or things you find at the beach. Try to think of as many words as possible within that category. 

  Work with the child to make a book with categories. Encourage the child to choose the categories, such as science, countries or animals. Add lots of pictures to the book to help the child's understanding. This can support pre-teaching. Read more about categorising.

• Explore definitions

  Look up key words with the child online. Encourage older children to use a dictionary to find the meaning of new words. Fun activities can help learning, such as a quiz on the definitions or crosswords. 

• Use spider diagrams

  Put the key word in the centre of the spider diagram and ask the child to think of words associated with the key word. Ask the child to explain why they think a word is associated.

  At the end of the week, provide the associated words to the child and ask them if they can name the central key word. Or you can give the child the key word and ask them to remember as many associated words as they can.

  

• Use word trees

  Word trees help to show how words are related. Using the topic of plants, they can be put into 2 main groups, plants we eat and plants we do not eat.

  Plants we eat include:

  • fruit such as apples and oranges
  • vegetables such as potato and cabbage

  Plants we do not eat include: 

  • flowers such as roses and daisies
  • trees such as oak and elm

  

• Use word maps

  Word maps can help children store new words in an organised way. Read more about word maps.