#SpeakUpSalford

Staff
& Professionals

How to help young people with Vocabulary and Word Finding Difficulties

 

What are vocabulary and word finding difficulties? 

Children with word finding difficulties struggle to find the right word to say at the right time. They will often take a long time to think of the word they want to use or choose a word that is wrong for the topic they are talking about.

 

Children with vocabulary difficulties often have limited vocabulary in general topic areas or struggle to remember the meanings of new words that they learn.

 

General strategies 

  • Children with vocabulary/word-finding difficulties may need longer to put the words together to answer a question. Please be patient and give them time to respond.

 

  • Children with vocabulary/word-finding difficulties often appear to wander off the topic or ‘talk around the houses’. You can help by gently reminding them about the conversational topic and steering them back on course.

 

  • If the child is struggling to tell you something you can prompt them by asking more specific questions:
  • Who was there?
  • Where were you?
  • When did it happen?
  • What happened?
  • What happened at the end?

 

  • If the child is struggling to recall a specific word then you can help by:
  • Giving 2 alternatives e.g. is it a guitar or a violin
  • Saying the initial sound of the word e.g it starts with g
  • Prompt the child to think about the category/group that the word belongs to e.g are you thinking of an instrument?
  • Asking questions about it?  what size is it? what does it look like? What do you do with it? Etc

Discussing the word in this way will often prompt the child to remember and be able to say it.

 

Specific strategies 

  • When teaching new vocabulary as part of a lesson you can help by creating a display for the class or word map (Elklan).

This can be made into a ‘dictionary’ for the child as the information can be kept and re-visited. This can contain lots of pieces of information about the word that will help the class/child to retain it and recall it on future occasions.

 

  • What type of thing is it? (an animal, an object, food etc.)
  • What does it look like? (colour, size etc.)
  • What is it made out of? (fabric, flesh, metal etc.)
  • What do you do with it?
  • Where do you find it?
  • When do you use it?
  • Draw a picture of the word.
  • What is the first letter of the word?
  • How many syllables are there in the word? Write a sentence with the word in it.
  • Say a sentence with the word in it.

 

Resources and Activities 

Registered Office: Middleton, Cowling, Keighley, W. Yorks,

BD22 0DQ, United Kingdom
Phone: 01535 631 346

www.blacksheeppress.co.uk

 

Useful Websites

  • www.rcslt.org  This is the website for the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.
  • www.talkingpoint.org.uk  This is a useful website for parents and teachers.  It contains information and advice.
  • www.afasic.org.uk  This is a parent led organisation that offers information and advice.  There are areas on the website for professionals also.

 

 

 
NEWS/ EVENTS

Local Initiatives

Early Years Initiatives

Our Early years team are currently working together with the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, this includes a rollout of language screening of children using the Wellcomm tool.

School Age Initiatives

We currently offer a range of virtual training sessions to schools for free! SENCo's will have been informed of training dates that you can book your staff on to. Please contact Fiona Taylor (fiona.taylor@nca.nhs.uk) or your Link SLT if you have any questions about this. 

 

 Enhanced Services initiatives

The Enhanced Speech and Language Therapy (SALT) Service offer bought-in input in schools. This might involve universal input, individual or group interventions. The Enhanced Team also support schools and staff to develop communication friendly environments and deliver training. For further information, please contact Fiona Taylor – fiona.taylor@nca.nhs.uk

 

I would also like to say that I am very impressed with the work Speech and Language Therapist is doing in school as well as the professional way she deals with my parents and her helpful advise to my staff. I believe credit where credit is due.

School staff

Lorna is amazing to work with and has made such an impact on our school provision, we are lucky to have her!

School SENCo

My child absolutely LOVES coming to see you, you are so good with him. We are extremely grateful for all of your care and support. He is counting down the days until we can come again.

Parent

We loved our sessions with Lucie, we found her to be positive and encouraging, we have already seen a huge improvement in his communication, using words and attempting new words to communicate with us in everyday tasks and his confidence in learning new words has shot up, he’s attempting 2 word phrases pretty well and even attempted 3 words on a couple of occasions. The difference for us is huge and we feel Lucie has set us up to keep improving now that the sessions are over.

Parent

I just wanted to send a quick email to say thank you for the training you delivered for us this afternoon, it was so useful and informative. It was great to have further training that was bespoke to Early Years and built on what we had done in the whole school training. We're excited to start implementing it for our children.

Early Years Teacher

I have just attended the virtual open evening and I thought it was a really nice way to explain the role and introduce the team as opposed to reading it on a job ad. I felt very lucky to have seen many of the benefits Fiona spoke about too so thank you for providing me with the opportunity to sit in on the training sessions.

Speech and Language Therapy Student

I am new to the role and I have found all members of the team extremely helpful and have gone out of their way to support me.

School SENCo

This is great and I am so appreciative of your support. We have nothing but fantastic things to say about the Salford SALT team and the support that you have given to both of our children.

Parent