Vocabulary

I think any of the vocabularly programs have their shortcomings especially when it comes to kids with learning differences. Many LD kids have trouble memorizing and most kids, LD or not, don’t retain memorized vocab words for very long.

If the point is to increase word recognition and word comprehension, I think nothing other than reading and listening really work. Reading brings the words to the learner in working context. Speaking the same.

There are some fun vocab games that can be played that may impact upon children’s vocabularly but do no harm. Pictionary comes to mind and charades. I take my vocab words out of the reading and write them on the board. From there we can go a million different ways but my 5th graders love to “act out” a word and have others guess which word they’re acting out. I separate the words into parts of speech catagories. The words that are difficult to act out at first thought are usually the most eagerly acted out.

I was wondering if you had any suggestions for story comprehension such as fun activities to do with a novel or something like that? I have seen board games made from novels but that is really it?
Thanks

I am a mother of a 5th grader dyslexic daughter. She has the ability to memorize the spelling list for the week but does not retain them. She does the same spelling list as the other kids in her class (she has a A average). We are still working on basic sight words for her everyday writting.

I have been looking for creative ways to help her retain these spellings. My daughter she is very visual - I like the idea of acting out words. Just recently she has started to come up with songs for words she struggles with on her spelling list, I have found she retains these words better then one’s she just memorizes.

It may be more information than you need but I’m sure you’re right about your daughter because the brain stores memorized information in a very different place than other information. That information that is just memorized is stored in what cognitive psychologist call “declarative memory” and fairly often the brain dumps any information in declarative memory. It just cannot hold on to great amounts of information that is merely memorized.

But if you put an experience around it, a song or acting it out, the brain stores it nearer to the place where it files away all the things you can do. That’s why you never forget how to ride a bike even if you haven’t ridden one in a long while. The brain stores “how to ride a bike” in the “how to do something” place in the brain.

The more pure information that we can turn into “how to do something” or something that was done, the more likely the brain is to remember the information. Rather than having students memorize information, teachers, including myself, should be creating experiences for students that make the information meaningful and experiental.

Just as you’re doing with your daughter.

Thank you Sara! This explaination of why/how this is mostly likely happening helps my understanding. I am alway trying to learn more about her LD. I will make sure we are adding more experiences around her learning of language.

I know one trick that also works with memory-loss patients. It is based on the idea that you will be more likely to remember things if there are multiple ways that your brain can get to the information. So, if you say the word, write the word, draw a picture about the word, invent a story to help explain or remember the word, etc. you are more likely to remember the word in one of those ways when put on the spot.

It even works in spanish:

abracer — to embrace

the c makes an s sound

the sentece is “A bra so snug invites a hug,” with “a bra so” sounding like the word and the rest of the sentence having the defintion

it’s cheesy (and maybe to racy for little kids), but I bet you’d remember it next week!