Page 99 - Routines-Based Early Intervention Guidebook

Routines-Based Early Intervention Guidebook

Teaching How to Describe 7.4

learning. Scrabble is one of the most popular. It is a high level game but there is

a whole range of other games for all different levels. Check out: Boggle,
Hangman, Apples to Apples, 7 Li le Words, What's the Word, and Word Stack.

There are also games that don't require anything physical, like the Alphabet game

played in the car where you need to find a word star ng with each le er in
alphabe cal order.

6. Don’t be Afraid of Bigger Vocabulary – Studies have shown that children whose

parents used “rare words” had higher vocabularies and greater reading

achievement than other children. We want to engage children on their own level

but that doesn’t mean that they can’t benefit from being around age‐level
vocabulary or higher. All vocabulary that is successfully used was first heard

being used by someone else in their environment or on television.

7. Read to Children – As we move along the con nuum of how to increase
descrip on skills we finally arrive at reading. Reading to a child is a powerful way

to demonstrate describing. Children hear words and make connec ons to the

pictures. They hear the correct pronuncia on of the word, and the many ways

the word can be used. They are ac vely engaged in the story so the word is
be er able to be imprinted to memory. Reading to children is an obvious

strategy. However, make sure that you are reading both storybooks and

informa onal books. Parents and teachers tend to emphasize vocabulary more

when they read informa onal books.
8. Increase Word Consciousness – Children should no ce when they come across a

new word and be excited to share it with you. The last thing we want is for a

child to encounter a new word and feel embarrassed because they don't know

what it means. We can help with this process by poin ng out when we
encounter new words too. Let your child share in the process of learning new

word meanings with you.

9. Teach Across Mul ple Contexts ‐ Create opportuni es for the same words to be

used across mul ple ac vi es, conversa ons, and texts. For example, words

Copyright © 2014 Bilinguis cs, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
91