How to Teach Vocabulary Strategies

As your little one grows as a reader, vocabulary strategies becomes more and more important to their reading. When your child reads with accuracy and fluency, but still struggles with comprehension, often times it is vocabulary that holds them back. Not only does reading help you to learn new words, but learning new words can help to improve your reading comprehension as well.

What is Vocabulary?

Simply put, vocabulary is knowing what words mean. In reading, this means that your reader knows what the words they read mean. Children need many different exposures to words to be able to add them to their vocabulary. However, they can often figure out the meaning of a new word when listening or reading by using sentences and paragraphs where they find the word.

For these words to truly be added to your child’s vocabulary, they will need to read and hear these words multiple times. After that, they feel comfortable using them in their own writing and speaking. There are a few great strategies to help your little one to expand their vocabulary and read with true comprehension.

Vocabulary Strategies

We pair our vocabulary strategies with silly names and stuffed animals to encourage use of the strategies. These follow similarly to our accuracy strategies, fluency strategies, and comprehension strategies. Even as my children grow, they remember the silly names and often want to read with a stuffed animal.

It is still important to model these strategies as you read to your child or even as you read independent of your child. My children often see me reading and will hear their parents discussing words, see me look up words online, or even finding synonyms for words. Even though these words may not be added to their expressive vocabulary yet, just by taking interest in the words you look up, they are adding these words to their vocabulary. The more that your child engages with words, the more words he or she will learn.

Picture Penguin

Teach your reader to look at pictures, illustrations, and diagrams when they read either fiction or nonfiction books. Often times the illustrations can help readers to figure out new words. In beginner books, pictures often show the most difficult word or word that doesn’t follow the pattern of the text. In more advanced books, the illustrations often help to explain the new vocabulary.

We pair this strategy with a stuffed penguin. Our children love to show the pictures to the penguin when they are practicing. It’s almost like having a reading buddy to share their thoughts. We also add the motion of making a box with our fingers to highlight the picture. Make an L with your thumb and pointer finger on both hands. Then turn them so that the opposite hand thumbs touch the opposite hand pointer finger. This strategy works best with nonfiction but can also be used with fiction when your child first begins to read.

Spot the Leopard

Help readers to spot the context clues to help figure out new words. Context clues involve using the rest of the sentence or paragraph to help figure out an unknown word. These work because often times the sentence or paragraph uses words with similar meanings. Other context clues include actions that describe the new words and examples of the new word. Occasionally, the sentence even gives the meaning of the word.

Teaching your child to spot these context clues can help on their journey to growing their vocabulary as well as comprehending what they are reading. The most common types of context clues are using an appositive to provide a direct definition, synonym, or antonym. Sometimes the author gives an explanation or general clues to guide towards the meaning of the unknown word.

Spot the Leopard is where our stuffed leopard comes out to play. Our children love to share unknown words with their leopard. We also add the motion of making two commas with our hands since context clues are often set off with commas. This strategy works both with fiction and nonfiction texts. However, it can often be easier to apply with nonfiction texts. Therefore, I suggest introducing context clues when reading nonfiction at your child’s level.

Changing Chameleon

Take a look at multiple meaning words. Can we try a different meaning of the word to help the sentence to make more sense? Sometimes a young reader will struggle to understand a sentence because one word has multiple meanings.

A common example is the word ran, which little ones understand to mean moving quickly. So when they hear that “The man ran for president” or “The store ran out of the jacket in my size,” they often misunderstand these sentences. This a perfect time to teach other meanings of a word. Additionally, it can also help children to learn the different contexts of words too.

Our changing stuffed chameleon works well here. The changing chameleon, takes in a word and changes the meaning to better fit the story. We also add the motion of flipping from our back of our hand to our palm to show the change. This strategy works well with both fiction and nonfiction books.

Nuts the Squirrel

Encourage readers to tune in to interesting words while they are reading. Maybe they try to find one new word each time they read, keeping a journal of new words. Or maybe they have a discussion of all new words after they read. Post-It flags are a great way to encourage your child to attend to new vocabulary. Either way, helping readers to pay attention to new words helps to grow their vocabulary.

In order to learn a new word, they must be able to recognize words they do not yet comprehend. We love talking to our children about new words in their reading. Afterwards, we try to use some of these words in sentences after they are shared. The more your child hears the words, the more likely the word will become part of your child’s vocabulary.

For this strategy, we pair with our stuffed squirrel who just loves new words. Our children shared their new vocabulary words with the squirrel as they read. We also add the motion of quickly making little grabs to hoard our new words, just like a squirrel grabs all their nuts. This strategy can be used with both fiction and nonfiction books, but is my favorite strategy to use with fiction books especially.

Feature Fox

Teach readers to use the different parts of the book to help them to learn new words. This strategy is especially useful in nonfiction books, where new words are often written in bold-face font. These words have definitions given in the glossary near the back of the book, but also might have definitions given in side margins too. Readers can use the index to look for other places in the text that a word may be used in the book to see other examples of the word in the text.

Also, the table of contents can help a reader to better understand new words too! The table of contents often provides the reader with the main topic of a section, which can better help readers to classify new words with words they understand. As your child grows, they can even use headings and subheadings to help them to form a better understanding of new words.

We pair this strategy with a stuffed fox. Our children love to show the stuffed fox the different features of the text. We also add the motion of opening a book and closing a book to remind us to use the features at the beginning and end of the book. This strategy is much easier with nonfiction than fiction.

Reference Rooster

Encourage readers to use outside of the text materials. For younger readers, this might be sight word charts, diagrams around their classroom, or picture vocabulary cards. For older readers, these may be utilizing the dictionary or thesaurus or even asking another person for help understanding a new word.

Of course, we pair this strategy with a stuffed rooster. It can be a little tricky to find a cute stuffed rooster, so using a decorated chicken or bookmark can be helpful. We also add the motion of our pointer and middle finger walking away from our book to show we need to use other resources. This strategy works both with fiction and nonfiction texts. Check out my store for Dual Language picture vocabulary support in both English and Spanish to assist with translations and new words.

Vocabulary Reading Strategies Work Together

We teach these six different vocabulary strategies separately, but also need to practice using them in combination. When fluent readers read, they use many of these different strategies at the same time. So it’s also important to teach your reader to use the strategies together. In the beginning, help your reader to focus on one strategy at a time. As they grow as a reader, encourage them to have one main strategy, but also have a secondary strategy that fits what they are reading that day.

We find that Nuts the Squirrel is a great strategy to pair with others. We recognize a new word, but now need to use other strategies to figure out what the new word means. Depending on the type of text your child is reading, your reader will pick a secondary strategy to practice.

How to Help Your Child Develop Vocabulary Strategies

If they struggle with picking a strategy, describe the book to them and ask which strategy might be a good one to try. “I notice that this is a nonfiction book with lots of bolded words. Which strategy could we use to help us to pay attention to all the new words?”

“I notice this book has lots of pictures to help support the writing. What strategy could we use to help us remember to use the pictures to support our reading?” The more ownership we can give our reader, the more independent they will become.

Final Thoughts on Vocabulary Strategies

In the early years of reading, we focus mostly on accuracy and fluency, with comprehension and vocabulary in the background. As readers become more accurate and fluent readers, comprehension moves into the forefront of reading. Vocabulary is always there, but sometimes it gets overlooked.

Sometimes we enjoy picking words for our children to learn while reading, but as each text is different and each child may know different words, it is much more valuable to teach vocabulary strategies to help children to grow their own vocabularies. This way your child grows their vocabulary no matter what they are reading. Each and every time they read they will add new words to expand their vocabulary.

While a text might be at the correct reading level for your child with good sentence length, the vocabulary can make this text seem impossible to comprehend for your reader. Other times, a text may be well above your child’s reading level or sentence length much too long, but your child easily reads the text because they have extensive vocabulary in the area. Vocabulary can really make a difference to the comprehension of any text.

Helping your child to link or group similar words together can encourage their vocabulary growth too. When your reader learns a new word, help them to find similar words that they already know to connect the new word. Not only does this help your reader to grow their vocabulary but it can help them to learn new words more quickly too!

Connect with Us for More Tips for Navigating Parenting

Don’t miss the beginning of our series detailing Developing Interest. As children grow in their reading skills, they also need help to find interesting books to read. The more series and authors they enjoy, the easier it will become for your child to find books to read.

If you found these strategies helpful, leave us a comment and let us know. Does your child have a favorite or one you are looking forward to teaching your child? We’d love to hear about it. We would love it if you would subscribe to our newsletter for more helpful tips and tricks as well a freebie from time to time.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.