Closing the Vocabulary Gap

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Grappling with how to support students to meet the increased demands of the curriculum was beginning to feel like an insurmountable task, when suddenly, the solution became clear. We should encourage children to read broadly for pleasure, while immersing them in word-rich classrooms which focus on vocabulary development. I completely agree with Quigley's premise, and his ideas are spot on and useful. The conclusions to each chapter, the appendices and the bulk of chapters 7 and 8 are worth the cost of the book alone. The performance of reading aloud can offer vital opportunities for pupils to learn. In particular, the act of reading aloud can benefit pupils’ reading fluency, as well as proving a helpful bridge to increasing reading comprehension. Reader’s Theatre is a comprehensive classroom approach that can offer a vehicle to foster fluency in the classroom. A recent research review … a set of classes or a plan of study on a particular subject, usually leading to an exam or qualification.

How can we as educators bridge the gap for students between the language they grasp already & more academic texts? When assistant headteacher Sarah Eggleton decided to give literacy a much-needed boost in her school, with a vocabulary push across all departments, she chose to do it via the explicit teaching of high-level language and decoding tools in all classes.

Classroom support for primary schools

If you are not able to join one of our in-peron masterclasses then join Alex virtually. We will be bringing together our physical and virtual delegates into one live collaborative experience. Teachology Education has teamed up with award-winning technology and software provider Glisser to combine live video and interactive slide sharing so you can fully engage in the virtual masterclass and receive the same content and training live. The teaching of word parts (morphology) and word histories (etymology) are some of most well-evidenced methods of explicit vocabulary teaching, but done well, we hand over the baton to our pupils and they become ‘word conscious’, spying word parts and word families each time they read, talk and write. Faced with a complex word like ‘oligarchy’, pupils can recognise the familiar root‘-archy’, meaning‘rulership’. It offers an essential hook to understand the word, offering more familiar related words like ‘monarchy’. In Closing the Vocabulary Gap,the authorexplores the increased demands of an academic curriculum and how closing the vocabulary gap between our ‘word poor’ and ‘word rich’ students could prove the vital difference between school failure and success. Attention to developing vocabulary should become a part of school planning. We can take the following steps:

Having recognised the need for worldly knowledge, we are using First News– a newspaper series for teenagers. We have found this to be an excellent way to encourage the students to read more.Well-written, light hearted stories based on the world’s news, and a point based scoring system encourages the students to complete crossword puzzles and answer comprehension questions, meaning they are actively learning with every article they read.To involve our struggling readers, the teacher reads the article to the class for the first time, and invites other students to volunteer to read.There is time for a short class discussion on each topic covered, and any new vocabulary is explicitly taught.We completed learning walks of vocabulary teaching to see it in practice, followed up with a student-voice survey looking at the consistency and frequency of teaching. You cannot explicitly teach all the words! With over a million words in the English language, teachers make careful selections regarding subject specific vocabulary and those sophisticated Tier 2 words. It is clear that reading rich texts, both in the classroom and beyond the school gates, is critical for language and vocabulary development. Put simply, the more words you read, the more you learn. CTVG – 7 Strategies for Exploring Unfamiliar Vocabulary’– this is a companion resource to the SEEC model, offering accessible strategies to Explore an unfamiliar word. Here, she explains her rationale, the challenges of implementation and the impact that the programme has had on the young people of her inner-city secondary. Tes: What inspired you to introduce whole-school vocabulary teaching?

In a sense, children are not just exposed to the definition of a word but have a detailed knowledge of its multiple meanings and the various ways that it can be used. The vocabulary gap is perhaps more difficult to spot at Key Stage 3 than it is in the earlier years.By this stage, students will have 7 years of schooling under their belt, yet, when questioned directly, will struggle to define words they should be very familiar with by now.Exacerbated by Covid interruptions, teachers are faced with an enormous challenge.How can we inspire adolescents to appreciate the importance of expanding their vocabulary, without embarrassing them in front of their peers?In simple terms, we know that school students need something like 50,000 words in their personal lexicon to flourish in secondary and beyond. A primary school-age child is typically learning at a rate of around 4,000 or 5,000 new words a year. How can we supercharge this vocabulary development? To stretch and challenge all children or for older children, they could explore the word class(es) and/or apply their knowledge through grammar, e.g. they might write a sentence using a subordinate clause or a command. (Please see my webinar and accompanying resources for further examples of this.) The RESCUE strategy can be used in one lesson but the explain section could be completed at a later date and/or the word could be applied to their writing. Support for schools – Reception (P1), Year 1 (P2) and Year 2 (P3) Also, there is a range of upcoming blogs supporting vocabulary instruction, to go with alongside these resources, with links and prompts for teachers and more. The key to effective vocabulary instruction is to get creative and find ways to bring words to life. The use of interactive mini-games can be used with word lists to do so.