Early strategies to support vocabulary storage and retrieval difficulties in the classroom

Choosing vocabulary

Select a ‘word of the week’. Choose the most important vocabulary items from the curriculum (identified on a weekly or half-termly basis).

Pre-learn vocabulary

Learn the words before they’re used in the classroom. This can be done individually or in a group.

Word of the week

Choose a word of the week that is focussed on in the class. The word could be displayed on a board with associated pictures as visual support and even a spider diagram or ‘word web’ filled out by the whole class together.

Repeat

Repetition is crucial. Repeat the word in a variety of contexts in and out of the classroom.

Play general word finding games and activities to support word storage skills such as word association, odd one out.

Word webs

Use this template to over learn words:

• talk about the sounds in the word
• talk about what the word means
• think about what other words are related to it
• practice using the word in a sentence
• draw a picture of the word or do an action for the word (if possible)

Visual support vocabulary mat

Create vocabulary mats for each table-top activity.

Helping a child to find or use a word

Time

Give them time (do not be afraid to leave a silence as they think of the word).

Describing

Ask them to describe the word such as, “What does it look like?”, “What do we do with it?” and “Where do we find it?”

Sounds

Give them the first sound of the word for example, with ‘spanner’ say “sp…”.