I regularly remind my students and my readers that retrieval is impacted by frequency of use and recency of use. So why would it surprise me that my client had difficulty retrieving the names of common shapes? While completing an oral directions activity, I noticed that she was misnaming square, rectangle, and triangle. Receptively, she was firm in her understanding. A year ago, these words were easy for her to retrieve.
I put together a “cheat sheet” for these 3 shapes. A picture of a “tricycle,” with a triangle drawn among its 3 wheels was the visual cue for “triangle.” a rectangular “wreck” served as a cue for “rectangle,” and a woman with “square hair” was the cue for “square.” I reminded this little girl about the syllables in each word and asked her to clap out syllable by syllable. After making the syllables explicit, I connected cues with the real word. I then had her “think the cue, but say the word” 5 times aloud. Finally, she had to make up a meaningful, grammatical sentence using the word. *
Success! I had forgotten one of my basic tenets: Don’t forget that frequency of use and recency of use strongly affect retrieval speed and accuracy. Those vocab words that were easy a year ago may not be easy to retrieve today.
*For a more detailed explanation of the process, please refer to “An Endorsement from the Word Finding Guru” at this link: https://www.wordfindingforkids.com/an-endorsement-from-the-word-finding-guru/ Reference: Dr. Diane German
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