How to Practise Vocabulary to Children

BACKGROUND

Vocabulary is one of the fundamentals of English. Students need to be prepared with a wide and vivid vocabulary to compete in the world's marketplace. The challenge of teaching vocabulary is creating lesson plans that are both effective and entertaining.

The Importance of Vocabulary :

• The singular importance of vocabulary has become a powerful insight to raising achievement.
• The words we know help us organize our learning.
• The creation of labels (words) is our tool for increasing learning.
• Vocabulary instruction should be a focal point of learning, especially for students impacted by poverty.
• Vocabulary instruction is an excellent advance organizer but also must be taught in context.

Vocabulary is critical to reading success for three reasons:

1. Comprehension improves when you know what the words mean. Since comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading, you cannot overestimate the importance of vocabulary development.
2. Words are the currency of communication. A robust vocabulary improves all areas of communication — listening, speaking, reading and writing.
3. How many times have you asked your students or your own children to “use your words"? When children and adolescents improve their vocabulary, their academic and social confidence and competence improve too.

A.   WHAT WORDS DO WE TEACH?

Knowing what words to teach is the first step in providing effective vocabulary practice. We have a favorite mnemonic device that helps me remember the types of words we want to teach explicitly:

• Type A Words: These words are like Type A personalities. They work hard in order to convey the meaning of the text being read. There are two sources for these words: Academic Language and the Content Areas. Academic Language describes the language of schooling — words used across disciplines like genre and glossary. Content Area words are specific to the discipline — words like organization in social studies and organism in science. If you want your students to “get it,” these are the must-know words.
• Type B Words: These words are the Basics. There are hundreds of high-frequency words. The basics make up a large percentage of student reading and writing. Students must be able to read words like the, is, and, are, been and because — well, because.
• Type C Words: The Connectors act as signal words. There may be some overlap with the basic words. Students need to understand the signals for cause and effect relationships, sequence and other important indicators of how text is organized.
• Type D Words: D is for Difficult — words with multiple meanings are challenging for all students and may be especially so for English-Language Learners. You may have students who simply freeze when a question is asked such as “What are the factors that contributed to the Civil War?” However, they could have answered the question correctly if asked, “What were the causes of the Civil War?” Students may think they know the word factor — from Fear Factor on television or from factors in mathematics and yet they may be challenged when the word is used in another context.
  
  When considering words with multiple meanings also pay attention to the consonant-vowel-consonant words children encounter when first learning to read — words like jam and ham. These words have accessible meanings if you think of the sweet, sticky stuff on toast (jam) or something you may eat with eggs in the morning (ham). It is a lot more difficult if you “elaborate” as Dr. Maryanne Wolf of Tufts University describes:

So learning to decode should not be meaning-free, but should provide a great opportunity for teaching the meanings of words including multiple ones. This kind of experience with words improves comprehension.

• Type X Words: X is for the eXtras. These are the words that will not be encountered frequently but in a certain story or context are important to meaning. A good example of this type of word is spindle in “Sleeping Beauty.” It is important to the fairy tale, but it is not a very high-utility word. I just tell kids what words like this mean without any special teaching.

B.   HOW DO WE TEACH?

Words! Words! Words! A student’s vocabulary — the words he or she can understand when reading and listening and use when writing and speaking are critical to success in school. This is the reason vocabulary is an essential element of effective reading programs as described in up-to-date research documents. The importance of vocabulary is made clear by Dr. Catherine Snow when she presents the following on what teachers need to teach:

• 26 letters of the alphabet
• 44 phonemes
• 75,000 words

It is clear that teachers must teach the sounds and letters systematically and explicitly — the challenge is how to teach 75,000 words.

Most basal reading programs teach about 20 words a week for about 24 weeks. If students learn 480 words for 12 years of schooling, it will not add up to the 75,000 to 120,000 (according to various estimates) words students need to succeed. To help students develop a robust vocabulary, all teachers, at every grade and in every subject, are vocabulary teachers. The following methods are supported by the research provided in the next section.

• Direct Instruction: Explicit teaching of carefully selected words improves understanding and helps students’ vocabulary grow. Often, it is best to pre-teach key words.
• Wide reading: Reading of texts helps expose students to many words including rare words — not high in frequency but high in important meaning. “Time on text” will have the highest payoff in terms of helping students learn many, many words.
• Words In Context: Students will learn most new words in the context of reading and writing. The two best ways I can think of to enrich the context for word learning is to read and discuss books.
• Books: My favorite book of the moment for teaching vocabulary is Alvie Eats Soup by Ross Collins. Even though is it is a picture book, it could be used from kindergarten through the early middle grades with concrete words like soup to abstract ones like irony. One of my favorite parts is the many words used to express concern about Alvie’s soup diet. Students need to be systematically exposed to book knowledge by being read to and by reading text on their own. The text must be carefully selected in order to connect students’ content from all of the arts and sciences.

• Talk: Try to infuse formal and informal conversation to model effective use of language and to focus on the introduction of new vocabulary. I used to write particular phrases or words to introduce each week in my lesson plan book. On one occasion when no one seemed to be doing well independently I said, “I am at the brink of my endurance!” I had everyone’s attention as they wanted to figure out what I meant. After our talk, I heard the phrase used on the playground and the individual words used in a variety of ways.
• Word Study: When students learn about the parts of words, prefixes and suffixes, and about root words, they are able to figure out many new words. Also, looking at the origin of words — words from other languages — increases word and world knowledge.

Word Consciousness: Being on the lookout for words, finding out what they mean, engaging in wordplay, looking for multiple meanings and looking up words in the dictionary all support the acquisition a powerful vocabulary.

C.   INSTRUCTIONS HOW TO PRACTISE VOCABULARY TO CHILDREN

1. Step 1

Choose a list of words to focus on that's an integral part of the students' existing curriculum. Include words that students find in their everyday lives. Provide vocabulary words that are age appropriate.

2. Step 2

Motivate students by creating rewards, games, puzzles and other fun activities. Mix a variety of activities centered on vocabulary to reach a broader range of students.

3. Step 3

Model proper use of vocabulary words. Use language creatively and with gusto. Have fun with your own vocabulary and students will want to have fun with theirs.

4. Step 4

Create a word wall where students write new and interesting vocabulary words. Refer to the wall often during class so students become familiar with it and its purpose.

5. Step 5

Quiz and test the students on their vocabulary words. Disguise the purpose, learning vocabulary, of the quiz. Explain that quizzes and tests only help the teacher know how well the students have been taught.

6. Step 6

Revisit old vocabulary words often. Bring them up casually in class and on quizzes. Tell students that learning does not end after the test. It is important for them to recall vocabulary words.

Kids love goofy monsters, especially ones they create themselves. Combine this love of monsters with children's love of drawing as a perfect way to teach new vocabulary to your preschooler. With just a few simple supplies and some time to be silly, you can teach vocabulary for body parts, shapes, colors and positions.

E. EXAMPLE

  Step 1

 

Teach shape vocabulary by drawing the basic shapes on a piece of paper and naming them for the kids. Then have them draw each shape on their paper as you say its name.

  Step 2

Ask the kids to turn their papers over, or give them each a new piece of paper. Explain that you will be giving them directions about what to draw and where, so they'll have to listen very carefully.

  Step 3

Choose a shape. Ask the children to draw that shape (or one of their choosing) "in the middle" of their paper as the monster's "torso." Explain that a "torso" is the middle body part of a creature, the part on which the head sits.

  Step 4

 

Introduce texture words to the kids. Show them "wavy," "straight" and "curly" lines, and have them draw some on either side of the torso to represent arms. Make sure they know it's okay to ask you if they're unsure what the words mean. To make the vocabulary lesson a little more involved, you can have the kids draw one type of arm on the "right" side and a different type on the "left" side.

  Step 5

 

Continue your lesson on body parts, texture and position by asking the children where "feet" would be placed on the monster. Once you have determined that the feet go "under" the torso, show them how to draw both "floppy" and "flat" feet. Let them choose which type to draw.

  Step 6

 

Encourage children to make their monsters more lifelike by adding "pointy" or "curved" ears "above" the monster's head.

  Step 7

Allow the kids to add details to their monsters, stipulating only that the monster must have "eyes," a "mouth" and some recognizable shapes somewhere on its body.

  Step 8

 

Finish creating monsters. Have the kids finish their monster pieces by putting a "sun" in the "corner" of the picture and "grass" on the "bottom" of it. Then share the monsters you have created.

• Teacher Store
• 

CONCLUSION

Knowing what words to teach is the first step in providing effective vocabulary practice. We have a favorite mnemonic device that helps me remember the types of words we want to teach explicitly: Type A Words, Type B Words, Type C Words, Type D Word, Type X Words. We have to know the steps to teach vocab to children and understand which topic children like. From that we can know and analyze how to teach vocabulary well to them.

CRITIC   AND SUGGESTION

This paper show about “how to teach vocabulary for children”. Not all aspect about children learn vocabulary that we can show to reader. We hope a suggestion to make perfect our paper. And we hope after reading this paper reader can understand and get ne knowledge to teach vocabulary for children.

 REFERENCES

www.google/Understanding-Vocabulary.com

www.vocabularya-z.com/vocabweb/research.do

www.time4learning.com/readingpyramid/vocabulary.htm

 

Free Template Blogger collection template Hot Deals BERITA_wongANteng SEO theproperty-developer