Matching and Opposite words

[Brackenboo]

Hi,

Just wondered if anyone had any advise for improving this skill. I would say at the moment when we do the CGP booklets she is getting about half right and we come across a lot of words she doesn't know. When we go through it we talk about the words but not sure how much stays in.

I read to her every day and she reads to herself, but I'm guessing other than trying to generally improve vocab I wondered if there were other ways to improve these skills other than doing them.

Thanks

[helen0209]

You could try getting her to put them into sentences. This may help cement their meaning when they are put into context.

We used to stick words to doors, and whenever DS went into a room he had to either give the meaning, put it in a sentence, give an antonym, synonym etc.

Play word association games on the way to school, in the car etc.

There is a free online site called freerice which looks at meanings of words, and for every correct answer they donate grains of rice through the World Food Programme.

[mum1522]

I have tried keeping a record of words with similar meanings and playing with my dd, as to try and remember.. Like I would say a word and she tries to recollect some of the matching words from her memory, if she has missed some obvious, I would help.. can do with opposites too.. Pretend that you have forgotten some obvious ones as well, which would encourage them to try more, really.. Its the realization that mummy is no perfect with them either... It helps!!

[teacher]

The importance of recycling vocabulary can’t be underestimated. It takes the average student at least three casual ‘viewings ‘ of new words to even remember them let alone contextualise them and be able to recognise antonyms so be prepared for constant revision. It’s just not possible to learn all the possible vocal that can arise so excellent knowledge of prefixes are your friends here.

[CharlotteHens]

Hi,

Just wondered if anyone had any advise for improving this skill. I would say at the moment when we do the CGP booklets she is getting about half right and we come across a lot of words she doesn't know. When we go through it we talk about the words but not sure how much stays in.

I read to her every day and she reads to herself, but I'm guessing other than trying to generally improve vocab I wondered if there were other ways to improve these skills other than doing them.

Thanks

Hi there, Brackenboo. We are in the same boat as you, but 2 things we've been doing that I think help a lot are:-
1) buy a book called 'Synonyms & Antonyms' by Christine R Draper as this is really good for picking up synonyms/antonyms vocab (a friend of mine who's son got into DAO this year swore by it!); and
2) our tutor has been making up little laminated cards with words on, and we play a matching/pairs game with the words, either for synonyms/antonyms, and using a 'game' format seems to help the vocab go in....

Good Luck!

[Octsmum]

Hi

I'd echo the synonyms & antonyms book by Christine Draper. The exercises are quite quick and we did the book a couple of times.

We also got some flash cards I think called Farquahar's flash cards. They were good but harder to just learn - the exercises in the Draper book were better as they were on themes.

Hope it helps.