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Improving vocabulary

Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 12:32 pm
by Stroudie
It's that time again.. DS2 will start year 5 after the summer and instead of the last minute panic which I had for DS1 (Marling) and DD1 (SHS). I'd like to start early this time and start developing DS2's vocabulary over the summer.

Any advice on a structured (or unstructured) way of improving vocabulary would be much appreciated.

Many thanks

Re: Improving vocabulary

Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 12:48 pm
by EmeraldE
Reading is the key, lots and higher end literature. I tend to go for childrens classics as the language is more challenging. Read to the kids as well and pause occasionally to check meaning of words etc. Plus I have done quite a bit of comprehension work so they can improve on inference (terribly tedious but does highlight how they are processing info). I also keep a dictionary with all my DS2's new words in it...he looks them up and writes it in. Then every fortnight I would ask him what they mean, building up vocab over time. Also just during everyday convo just using higher language and saying "do you know what that means?" or "can you think of a word that means the opposite?" etc.

I also try to play games like scrabble and boggle to try and increase the range of words he is subjected to. After all they will learn from the words we use as well.

Hope this helps

:D

Re: Improving vocabulary

Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 1:53 pm
by Stroudie
That's great many thanks. Which children's classics do you recommend for a DS?

Re: Improving vocabulary

Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 6:42 pm
by yoyo123
have a look at http://www.freerice.com

also games like scrabble and upwords are really good, especially if you allow dictionary to be used