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Help! How to teach vocabulary?


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DD11 will be participating in a vocabulary contest sometime in August.  This is something that she really wants to do - she has made it to the finals without any formal preparation.  The organizers provided a list of approx 1000 words of which 10 will appear in the initial round. The list has advanced words.  How should she study these words?  Find the meaning in the dictionary and memorize them?  I would appreciate any pointers that can be offered.

 

TIA!

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First make sure she can read the words, particularly if the contest is an oral one (i.e. spelling bee style).

 

Next, go through the words and see what words she knows and how many meanings of each words she knows. Once you narrow them down you should have a better feel for what she needs to work on.

 

After you narrow down the list see if you can start using the words in day to day conversation. Also, see if you can break down Greek/Latin roots to focus on meaning. 

 

 

 

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Oh, fun! Maybe after looking them up, copying down the word and definition, and reciting them, she can try to create some kind of story containing the words that challenge her the most? With pictures to help jog her memory of words? Or she can find associations (with famous people, or places, or objects) with some of the most difficult words? These are all things I did to help learn difficult vocabulary way back when I had a similar task in junior high. She could also put her list into categories (it could be parts of speech, but it could also be completely silly as that is sometimes easier to remember) and make a few little narratives or narratives to remember them. (Words that make me think of monkeys, words I'd want on a desert island, words I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley...)

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somewhat related. here is a book on how  Indian children win american spelling bees:  The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds.  Word search Indian Spelling Bee winners; You might want to see the James Macquire's  PBS interview around 2006.  I suspect that the .winner of your competition is preparing like this. 

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  • 11 months later...

If there are any with Greek or Latin roots, learn the roots.  My greek and latin root word bingo helps make that easy and fun, my students learned the roots fast just by playing with me and other volunteers saying a few words and their definitions for each root while they played. You can make your own with the the roots she needs to learn.  

They are linked in the teacher folder on my syllables page:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/syllablesspellsu.html

I like the idea of flashcards and focusing on the ones she doesn't know.  You can carry a few in your purse and make funny sentences with them and study them on the go.

If you make up silly picture mnemonics for the really tough ones, that might help.  The book "Ready, Set, Remember" shows some on the cover and has silly pictures for remembering all the states and capitols and the order of the presidents.

https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Set-Remember-Jerry-Lucas/dp/0914850318/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527712021&sr=8-1&keywords=ready+set+remember&dpID=51XubeWtoLL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

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Since her intention in learning these words is for a contest and not to expand her everyday vocabulary, I'd be sure that all practice (or, if she's a highly visual person, a good portion of it) is conducted using the specific format of the contest.  This is because learning does not transfer well from one situation to another, so the more like the contest you can make her practice sessions, the better.  So this would include seemingly trivial things like having her stand during practice, if that is what she will do in the contest.

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