Newsletter – 01 April 2022

As students move up the year levels towards upper primary school, their vocabulary starts to play an increasingly critical role in their learning. Reading and listening comprehension becomes significantly impacted if students don’t understand key words or concepts. Teachers regularly find that not knowing one or two key words in a text means that children don’t properly comprehend the whole piece or miss vital information. Vocabulary becomes even more important in secondary school as students start to work with more complex scientific and academic terminology. A limited vocabulary also limits our ability to express ourselves verbally or in written form, with precision. To be fully literate, we draw on all these ‘vocabularies’ for learning and for life.

Research has shown that our ‘receptive’ vocabularies, that is the words we can understand in spoken and written language, is often at least two grade levels above our ‘expressive’ vocabularies or the words we say and use in our writing. In other words, we might understand the word in our reading or when someone says it but we don’t incorporate it into our own talking or writing until we develop greater confidence. Studies indicate that most people need around twelve encounters with a new word in a variety of contexts to fully understand and apply it. These repeated encounters with a word are known as ‘multiple exposures.’

It is also important to remember that there are often more than one meaning for a word. For example, ‘leg’ can be a body part, a part of a trip, the support on a piece of furniture, or be used to describe walking or running – ‘I legged it.’ Children need to learn and use the multiple meanings of words in their correct context. This understanding develops over time through multiple exposures. A good metaphor for this is that of a dimmer switch gradually turning up the light on the full meaning of the word over time.

Here are some ways that parents/carers can support their child to expand their vocabulary:

-Read and expose children to texts with more challenging vocabulary or by authors with inspired word use.

-Discuss new words and concepts with children if they are unsure what they mean.

-Notice new and interesting words and celebrate them. You might see or hear them in books, magazines, on TV, posters, signs, song lyrics etc etc.

-Engage in wordplay in the home by using puns, playing word games such as Boggle or Wordle and creating tongue twisters.

-Encourage your child to talk with people with more extensive vocabularies.

-Try a family ‘word of the week’ – challenge everyone to use this new word correctly in their speaking or notice it in their reading. Keep a tally of who spies/uses the word the most!

Good luck and enjoy playing with words!