Promoting Literacy in Deaf Children
Presented on Friday, 7 December 2007
Learning New Vocabulary
Catherine Baldwin
When giving the spellings of new vocabulary to learn:
1. Give time to discuss meaning and use in context
2. Where appropriate, consider different meanings depending on context
+ highlight significance of homonyms
eg:Ben will train for the race.
I will catch a train to
London.
3. Depending on level of children’s grammatical knowledge, indicate word class
eg: a train (noun) to train (verb)
4. Give time for pupils to listen to and say the new words you introduce – use St John’s phonetic alphabet and indicate the number of syllables and the stress pattern
eg: phonetic = / fu ne tik /
5. Encourage children to learn spellings by writing 6 times – emphasise look + cover + say + write + check
6. Always provide a definition or example of use and expect pupils to learn meaning/usage as well as spelling.
7. In the spelling test, check understanding of meaning/usage by using cloze sentences
eg: If the spellings learnt are train and fast…
Choose
the correct word to complete the 2 sentences:
1. Ben
will ……………………… for the race.
2. He
is a very ……………………….. runner.
NB: the cloze sentences must be easily understood by pupils
8. Reinforce previously learnt spellings and use in different contexts – it is very important to emphasise flexibility of meaning.
9. Do not ask pupils to learn spellings not previously discussed, for example from word lists.