
What parents can do to help at home:
- Engage your child in conversations every day. If possible, include new and interesting words in your conversation.
- Read to your child each day. Whenever a book contains a new or interesting word, pause and define the word for your child.
- Help build word knowledge by classifying and grouping objects or pictures while naming them.
- Help build your child's understanding of language by playing verbal games and telling jokes and stories.
- Encourage your child to read on his or her own. The more children read, the more words they encounter and learn.
What our tutors can do:
- First, provide a simple, kid-friendly definition for any new word. For instance, you might say, “Enormous means that something is really, really big.”
- Second, provide a simple, kid-friendly example that makes sense within their daily life. “Remember that really big watermelon we got at the grocery store? That was an enormous watermelon!”
- Third, encourage your student to develop their own example. “What enormous things can you think of? Can you think of something really big that you saw today? That's right! The bulldozer near the park was enormous! Those tires were huge.”