Building Vocab - progress and tips

[Turtlegirl]

My Yr 5 daughter is now using the vocab builder programme from this website. Is anyone else using it? She has had 60% with her first couple of tries. Should I be expecting more at this stage in the prep process?

Also - just to share my current top tip for reluctant recorders of vocab: I recently bought her Pink Porcupine 'Flippers' which I got in WHSmiths - basically blank cards held together with a metal ring. If a word is unfamiliar I get her to write it down with its definition (and if I'm lucky an antonym on the reverse). This is by far the most successful way I've found of getting her to acknowledge words she doesn't actually know. Her reading comprehension is good, so she's always reluctant to admit that she doesn't actually know the specific meaning of the word.

I hope this doesn't contravene any advertising regulations!

[DIY Mum]

Oh, I know the ones you mean! Used them myself last year to help me retain some facts for my, ahem, Science GCSE (Needed science gcse for my pgce this Sept)

Can't remember what my dcs scored initially when using the Vocab CD but it did get fairly monotonous after a while with them scoring full marks after several attempts

Le_ _ _ing *-* website has some pretty good exercises that are geared towards giving children ownership of the word rather than 'knowing' the word as in parrot fashion. Downside: it's not free and (U.S) English.

Trying not to breach any forum 'advertising' rules

[um]

AE Vocab are very good in my opinion, if somewhat torturous.

Also Schonnel spelling books

And of course freerice!

My ds1 did the vocab cd rom and again, his first attempts were pretty poor until he learned the words.

[Turtlegirl]

My daughter has been doing the AE quizes for ages (in a slightly copywrite-infringing form from her initial tutor previously and now in the pukka books). She can do those because she is clever and logical but having done them she rarely knows the words again the next time I ask her, especially if they are out of context. She has a dyslexia diagnosis which makes abstract words especially difficult for her to retain.

As I understand it, part of the KE Foundation exam is synonyms and antonyms given out of context. That's the part I'm worried about!

I'm keeping her going with the cd, but once she's done the quiz she doesn't really want to talk about the words she got wrong. Early days though, so I'm praying that some will stick. *hopeful face*

[fm]

Possibly you are doing it the wrong way round. You should list the main words and get her to learn them, as many as she can retain a week--say, ten. Then after a couple of weeks, give her the exercise in the book from which you have derived the words to see if she has retained them, as well as regular tests on them. I would use Schonell, however, rather than the AE words. Schonell 3rd includes all the main words from the AE books without the padding!

You are right. Intelligent children can deduce the words in this situation, but are unlike to retain them without a conscious effort. If they are the rare children who can pick up words after just one telling, then they won't need to do these books at all because they will already have a sizeable vocabulary.

Also, in the synonyms test, they sometimes see if the children know their parts of speech so they might give, let's say, the word definite with a choice of : certainty, probable, rare, positive. They need to know or, at the very least, have a feel for parts of speech in order to reject certainty as a noun and go for positive as an adjective.