Strategies to support vocabulary storage and retrieval difficulties in the classroom (KS2)

Choosing vocabulary

Select the most important vocabulary items from the curriculum (identified on a weekly or half-termly basis).

Learning vocabulary

Create a word web for each word:

• what it means
• what it sounds like
• how many syllables
• break down the word into syllables and highlight the beginning sound of each syllable
• related words
• put the word in a sentence

Templates for creating a word web (PDF)

Topic dictionary

Build these word webs into a topic dictionary.

More information is available here: How to build a topic vocab dictionary

Pre-learn vocabulary

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

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 for example, word association, odd one out.

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?’ ‘Where do we find it?’

Sounds

Give them the first sound of the word such as spanner > ‘spa…’