Vocabulary  
Students may have a poor vocabulary for various reasons:

• Limited life opportunities
• Specific difficulties learning and remembering new words.
• General learning difficulties
• Problems accessing words stored in the memory.

Strategies to improve Vocabulary development and word finding:

Strategies to develop vocabulary:

• Introduce a few new words at a time
• Provide a list of new vocabulary so that the student knows which vocabulary he needs to learn, differentiated according to student’s individual need.
• Explain the word in language that the student is able to understand and encourage the student to explain what the word means.
• Use multi-sensory learning, for example:

See it ( objects, real situations, photos etc.)

Hear it

Say it – say the word and put it in a sentence

Read it

Write it – again write the individual word and in a sentence

• Use visual strategies, for example: Vocabulary maps
• Reinforce the new words regularly over time.

Strategies to support word retrieval: in order to strengthen the meaningful links between words, and to give structure to vocabulary learning, students can be explicitly taught about:

• functions: you eat with it (fork)
• categories: it's furniture
• opposites: this one's short, that one's long
• features: it's thin; it's made of wood; you write with it
• attributes and appearance: it's black and white
• associations: it's a bit like a horse...
• similarities and differences: it's like a horse,  but you don't ride it
• homonyms: words that have the same form, but different meaning, such as 'bear'
• synonyms: words that have very similar meanings, such as 'little' and 'small'
• hierarchies and parts of whole, such as cup and handle, or flower and petal.

Some students may respond well to phonological cueing as a means to retrieve words: 'It begins with s ...'; 'It has two beats (syllables)'.

  Other useful strategies for vocabulary learning:

• Individual vocabulary book, in which words are written/drawn with their meanings, dictionary definitions or related ideas; this book can be like a Filofax or address book in size and format; although this can be linked to spelling, it is important that vocabulary is recorded within the relevant topic or curriculum area.
• Icons: symbols or cartoon drawings can be used as visual shorthand to label, learn, reinforce key words or concepts; they should be particular to the child or class for note-taking, revision or written tasks.
• Annotated diagrams: these may be recorded in individual vocabulary books, in a book on each table or on wall posters.
  
  Group/individual focus

Some students may need:

• to be taught very basic vocabulary; if necessary, through experience and using objects and pictures (but they will also need to learn some curricular vocabulary)
• key ideas and vocabulary prioritised for all topics
• a multi-sensory approach to vocabulary learning.

Students with word-finding difficulties will need strategies that help them learn and retrieve vocabulary at will.  This will usually require explicit teaching about:

• functions
• categories
• associations
• features
• similarities/differences
• the phonological characteristics of words