In this blog series, expert voices share their passion and commitment to vocabulary, and tell us how they are narrowing the word gap in their schools. Faculty Head Miranda McDade explains why there is a need to explicitly teach vocabulary alongside reading for pleasure. Read Miranda’s blog Assistant SENDCo, Lucy Bryant offers some practical, simple ways to support […]
Read more 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 […]
Read more Literacy is essential at all ages and stages of development. Working in a forward-thinking school, we are aiming to put literacy at the heart of the curriculum as it is the scaffold underpinning learning and understanding in all subjects. However, after a grilling from year 10, I found that teaching etymology wasn’t necessarily having the […]
Read more Keep the bigger picture in view The image of the Reading Rope is a powerful one. As a primary school teacher for 20 years, I worked to twist together the fibres to build and strengthen the rope with the aim of sending pupils to secondary school fully able to access the curriculum. Now, working at […]
Read more Most teachers will tell you that the longer you remain in education the more you feel: training, professional development dialogue and staff CPD goes in cycles. New variations of past ideas emerge and make you question two things: one how old you feel and two, why you didn’t pursue these ideas when they first emerged? […]
Read more I was appointed as Language for Learning Lead at Icknield Community College in September 2016 with a broad rather vague brief. ICC is an Oxfordshire academy of 700 11-16yr olds on roll with lower than national average FSM, EAL and SEN cohorts. Building on my predecessor’s legacy, I continued to deliver a ‘word-of-the-week’ to tutors […]
Read more As the Trust Lead for English at Bridge Schools in Cornwall, we have identified the need to prioritise the teaching of vocabulary and work together to ensure that we make a concerted effort to close the word gap. We know that the research indicates that a child’s vocabulary can affect not only their academic progress […]
Read more As a graduate in both English Language and Literature, I always had a vague notion that vocabulary development was best undertaken through reading a variety of texts and encountering new words in context. I assumed that vocabulary could be built merely by using context clues and by encouraging pupils to read for pleasure. We would […]
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We share Shareen Wilkinson’s top tips to expand children’s vocabulary and help close the Word Gap from the Word Up podcast series.
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In this blog, experience primary school teacher and English adviser Shareen Wilkinson (Mayers) explores approaches to teaching vocabulary, focusing on one strategy for explicitly teaching vocabulary in context.
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