The size and variability of a child's vocabulary is one of the strongest predictors of their future academic success, so learning how to teach your child new words, in a way that works, is worth doing.

I'm going to outline nine evidence-based ways to teach your child new words and make them stick. These were taken from a research review by Justice, Schmitt, Murphy, Pratt and Biancone, published in 2014.

If you'd like to see the strategies in action, click here to watch a four minute video of me teaching a new word.

The nine strategies are repetition, definition, lexical depth, demonstration, contextualisation, use/grammar, morphology, sounds/letters and active engagement.

1. Repetition
This is the number of times the word is said by the adult, e.g. "measure. We measure the flour."

2. Definition
Defining the word explicitly, e.g. "Measure means finding out how much of something."

3. Lexical Depth
Identifying words related to the target word including synonyms (similar meaning words) and antonyms (opposite meaning words,) e.g. "The opposite of measure is guess or estimate."

4. Demonstration
Acting out, illustrating or demonstrating through the senses, e.g. "Let's measure some water."

5. Contextualisation
Extending the meaning of the target word beyond the current context or activity, e.g. "Remember how we measured the bath salts when we were running a bath yesterday."

6. Use/Grammar
How the word is used in sentences, e.g. "We say measure the flour, not flour the measure."

7. Morphology
Talking about the features of the word or other words that share parts of the word, e.g. "Measuring is the word measure with the -ing ending."

8. Sounds/Letters
Talking about sounds and letters in the word, e.g. "I can hear a mmm sound at the beginning of measure. It starts with the letter M."

9. Active Engagement
Ask your child to do something relevant to the target word, including saying or defining the word, e.g. "Use the word measure in a sentence."

Give it a try. You don't need use all the strategies in one setting or even use them all. Just making a commitment to talk about new words with your child will make a big difference.

A good goal is to focus on ten new words a week. That's one or two new words a day. You can discuss new words as the opportunity arises: perhaps in conversation, in a TV programme, or in books.

Making sure your child has lots of exposures and opportunities to learn and use new words across the day, following days and weeks is the way to give your child the best way to really learn, understand and remember new words.

I suggest having a list of new words on the fridge that you can add to easily. Your child can access this list if they can read and it can act as a reminder to you all to try to use the new words.

If you'd like a handout of these strategies (perhaps to stick on your fridge next to your new words list,) click here to download.

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