Building a Strong Vocabulary

Developing a strong vocabulary helps with communication, comprehension, and reading ability.   There are many different strategies parents can use to build their children’s vocabulary, even during common, everyday activities.

• Converse with your child frequently.  Don’t be afraid to throw some “bigger,” more complicated words into your speech.
• Encourage children to ask questions about words they don’t know.  Explain the words with proper pronunciation, definition, and even an example or two.
• Have your children tell stories, and ask prompting questions to foster detailed explanations within the stories.
• Play word games.  There are the traditional favorites like “Scrabble” and “Boggle,” but with the amount of educational technology we have at our fingertips, word game apps are a beneficial way to go too.
• Read! Read! Read!  Read to your children, and have your children read to you.  The more children read and hear new words, the more likely they are to use those words in speech and writing.
• Relate new words to ones your children already know.  This helps put words into groups and helps children make connections in the world around them.
• Correct mistakes carefully.  If children mispronounce or misuse words, correct the children in a positive way.  It is easy for a child to feel embarrassed when making such a mistake, so it is helpful to praise your child for attempting to use expanded vocabulary.

At Think Tutoring, we use many different resources to improve children’s vocabulary.  We encourage students to hear, read, write, and speak newly learned words every day.  We always strive to reinforce an expanding vocabulary, and hope students take it with them into their daily lives.    

Before You Hire a Reading Tutor: The Need for Diagnostics

Because every child is different, there is no single way to help a child read better.

For decades, educators have debated the best way to teach children how to read, endorsing two basic approaches – phonics or whole language.   The former emphasizes “sounding it out” where students apply decoding skills to string letters together to arrive at the appropriate sound.  For example, the phonic skill “Blends” has students practice saying two commonly combined consonants such as “Tr” as in truck. 

Proponents of whole language argue that children will learn these words (and by extension, the phonetical constructs) through the natural of course of reading; the word truck will be learned within the context of seeing it in a sentence, whether in a book or on a chalkboard in the classroom.   Essentially, they argue that building up a child’s sight vocabulary is generative – increased sight word vocabulary naturally strengthens a child’s ability to learn new words.

Every Child is Different

Advocates of phonics, however, argue that unless the tr blend is learned independently, a child won’t be able to read and sound out a more difficult word with which they are not familiar.  Example:  trespass. 

To be sure, many educators advocate a combination of both. While the phonics vs. whole language debate continues, most educators agree that for the struggling reader an individualized learning plan that addresses her unique skill deficiencies is critical.

Why Does My Child Struggle With Reading?

How can you know what skills your child needs improve upon?  There is no substitute for researched-based diagnostics testing that clearly measures student abilities across a variety of specific skills:  phonics, sight vocabulary, functional vocabulary, and the core comprehension skills which include Main Idea, Sequence, Cause and Effect, and Inference.

Before you hire a reading tutor, make sure that the services they provide include comprehensive diagnostics upon which a specific learning plan can be created --  just for your child.  Further, these diagnostics should establish a baseline against which the efficacy of the tutoring program can be measured.

Look for upcoming posts which address specific reading strategies. And visit our website to learn more about Think Tutoring Reading Programs Reading and how we help hesitant readers become confident and successful.