When 11-year-old Jillian’s mom called her daughter to dinner, the youngster smiled at her parents as she sat down at the table and announced, “I’m ravishing.” Her mom quickly replied, “You certainly are! And, I bet you are also ravenous."
The Importance of Vocabulary Skills
Building vocabulary is essential to success. According to the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation, a non-profit organization that has studied human abilities and aptitudes since 1922, vocabulary level is the best predictor of overall success in school and of performance on the SAT-Verbal and other similar tests. A characteristic of successful people in many occupations is a large and exact vocabulary. Needless to say, a strong vocabulary is an equally important skill for special-needs children.
When children are babies, we can’t wait for them to learn to talk. Parents instinctively teach their infants vocabulary by reading to them, identifying objects, and through conversation. Small children learn literally thousands of words. As children reach school age, they are introduced to more vocabulary through their weekly lists of words and reading. But there’s still a role for parents here! There a many delightful and creative teaching tools for special-needs children, as well as family games that can help build vocabulary skills.
Vocabulary-Building Games: Turn Learning into Laughing
Vocabularies grow when kids read, write, and converse. Memorizing vocabulary lists is dull work. Parents can help their school-age children expand their vocabulary with vocabulary-building games and other fun strategies.
• Make learning vocabulary fun. In many elementary school, kids come home with a list of words they have to know by the end of the week. Write the vocabulary word on one side of an index card. Flip the card over and write the definition. Put the cards on the dining room table. During dinner, pass a card to each member of the family. No one is allowed to speak unless they are using the vocabulary word in a sentence. Once the word is used, select another card. The person who has correctly used the most words at the end of the meal wins the game.
• Word-A-Day. If your child doesn’t have a school-generated vocabulary list, post a family word-of-the-day. Be creative and hang the words in the bathrooms, on the refrigerator and in the car. Incorporate the words into daily conversations. When playing Scrabble or other word games, award bonus points for using these special words.
• Share a new word. Once a week, have each family member share a new word they encountered. Mom and Dad should look for and look up new words while they are reading the newspaper, a novel, or even a cookbook. As kids get older and their vocabulary expands, they will enjoy stumping their parents with their knowledge.
• Even if your children are avid readers, don’t assume their vocabularies are growing. Children and adults are guilty of skipping over unfamiliar words to get on with the story. Readers rely on context clues and don’t stop to use a dictionary. Keep dictionaries easily accessible in your home and kid-friendly tools such as the American Heritage Children’s Dictionary software.
Show your child how to use a dictionary on the Internet. Encarta.com will pronounce the word aloud. Encourage children to stop and look up the unfamiliar words they read or hear in conversation or on the television. Merriam-Webster is geared to kids with a student dictionary and daily buzz word.
• Listen to books on tape. Parents and their children can share a book by listening in the car, which makes commuting and travel time pass quickly. Everything from classics such as Where the Red Fern Grows to the Harry Potter series is available on audio. Check your local library or bookstore. Remember, children can listen to books that are beyond their reading level—and parents can stop a tape to discuss an unfamiliar word. As a special bedtime treat, play a chapter of a book each night.
• Read aloud to your children—no matter their age. Make the time special by reading with an expressive voice and using accents. Let your children read aloud to you.
• Write notes to your child using vocabulary words. Put them under their pillow or in their lunchbox. As your children mature, send them e-mails.
• Visit the library and join the summer reading program. Check local bookstores to see if they are sponsoring a children’s program. Join an online reading program such as Book Adventure, a free reading motivation program for K-8. Kids create their own book list from the over 6,000 titles on the site. After reading the book, kids take multiple-choice quizzes on the books and earn points and prizes.
• Let your kids play word games on the Internet. The Family Education website Fun Brain and book publisher Houghton Mifflin have entertaining and educational games.
• Turn your child’s vocabulary list into a word search by using the free Teach-nology Word Search Maker.
• If you need to generate vocabulary words, check out Super Kids vocabulary builder. It has a word-a-day, for 4th grade up to SAT-level words. The New York Times word-a-day on its Learning Network posts a word and states how many times it has appeared in the newspaper.
Mastering new words can be fun and engaging, whether using no-cost family vocabulary-building games or state-of-the-art teaching tools for special-needs children. When the whole family plays with words, children will not only build their vocabulary, they’ll also have an opportunity to spend fun time with parents and family members.
