Understand, memorise, reuse
The French curriculum describes three stages for learning a word: understand, memorise, reuse. The activities of Lexikit follow them.
With “Say the word”, the activities of Lexikit now cover the whole path of a word, from the first time it is heard to its use. The French preschool curriculum sums up this path in three verbs: understand, memorise, reuse.
Understand
A word starts by being heard and linked to what it names. This is receptive vocabulary. “Where is…?” or bingo only ask the child to recognise: the child hears the word and points to the picture. This stage is open even to a child who does not speak much yet.
Memorise
To move into long-term memory, a word must come back, and the child must make the effort to retrieve it. “What's missing?”, the memory game and “Hidden picture” ask the child to remember the word without seeing or hearing it.
Reuse
A word is learnt when the child uses it, at the right moment, in a sentence. This is productive vocabulary. Naming the picture with no help in “Say the word”, asking for a card in Happy Families or telling a story with the words learnt belong to this stage. It comes after receptive vocabulary and needs time. The Eduscol guide on preschool vocabulary (2020) says it: “The vocabulary a pupil has is much richer in reception than in production. The words already met are there, but the pupil sometimes has trouble mobilising them” (page 30, translated from French).
In what order
Lexikit does not impose an order. One possible sequence is to discover the words with a picture dictionary, recognise them in bingo, remember them in the memory game, say them in Happy Families and find them again on a worksheet. The same list of words serves every stage.
