By Ashleigh Fielding | posted on June 5, 2020
A GREAT Southern primary school teacher has created her own vocabulary class resource to fill a void she has seen in children’s language skills.
Kendenup Primary School’s Raelene Palfrey was inspired to create the vocabulary workbook after a student approached her and struggled to convey what they wanted to say.
She began using the resource this year in her Year 4/5/6 class and said her students loved it.
“I could see that the vocabulary was actually shrinking with the kids,” Ms Palfrey said.
“They weren’t using extremely vivid words, and it was affecting their reading, because they would come across words they had never used or seen before.
“So it’s had quite a profound impact on their ability to describe how they are feeling and on their reading.”
Ms Palfrey’s class spends time every day to work on a few pages of the book.
Activities include learning the definition of words, finding synonyms and antonyms of words, learning different verbs, adjectives and nouns, and crafting ‘stretchy sentences’.
