Vocabulary & Oral Language: The Learning Focus
Vocabulary and oral language grow through meaningful exchanges about objects, actions, and experiences. A picture can provide a shared conversation starter, but naming isolated images is only one part of understanding and using a word.
A Practical Starting Point
Choose between Picture Vocabulary for concrete nouns, Action Words for what someone is doing, and Describing & Opposite Words for features and contrasts. During a conversation about a dog, an adult might expand a child’s ‘dog’ into ‘The small dog is running.’ Follow the child’s interest and allow time for an answer.
Choosing Appropriate Support
Accept gestures, home-language words, and spoken English at the child’s current level. Supply a useful label without requiring repeated correction. When an illustration is ambiguous, discuss possible meanings instead of treating one label as the only answer. Use real objects and experiences to clarify unfamiliar pictures.
Choose a More Specific Learning Goal
- Picture Vocabulary: Use simple pictures to help children hear and say the names of common items found in everyday life.
- Action Words: Match familiar spoken action words to pictures showing what a person or animal is doing.
- Describing & Opposite Words: Use familiar pictures to discuss qualities and match everyday opposites such as wet and dry or happy and sad.