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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The term ‘word gap’ is used to describe how children with a smaller vocabulary than others are disadvantaged in a range of ways. There are two main ways you can support your child and help them to build their vocabulary – by encouraging reading for pleasure, Here we share a range of ideas to help […]
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‘A Sea of Talk’ Helen Prince considers some of the educational challenges facing schools and offers her advice for encouraging developing vocabulary across the curriculum. Responding to a pandemic was not part of my teacher training. Dashing around Christ Church, Canterbury all those years ago, I remember no module on understanding the challenge of students […]
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In the English classroom How we did it – planning We began by looking at the curriculum. What KS4 content did students struggle most with? What vocabulary could we teach them to help them communicate their ideas more clearly? We looked at our literature texts, the demands of GCE English Language and then at our […]
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It started with a book… Closing the Vocabulary Gap by Alex Quigley is the book that started the Stretford High School English Department’s endeavor to improve our students’ vocabulary. Quigley opened the dialogue for a problem we knew existed but weren’t sure how to solve. His book clarified the classification of words we needed students […]
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One of the worst things about being unwell is setting cover. Everyone has those ghastly days of knowing they are too ill to function in the unforgiving environment of a school. This increases at the thought of trying to set meaningful cover work for 5 or 6 classes. There are very few jobs in which […]
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We recently held a small event in our Oxford offices to talk to primary and secondary school teachers about vocabulary and the Word Gap in their school. Lots of interesting, practical ideas were shared and discussed and we have summarised some of them here: Give key vocabulary at the start of each lesson. Encourage students […]
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There has been a lot of talk in recent months, both in the press and on social media, about the word gap and the new Ofsted Framework , now being applied in schools across England. Given Ofsted’s focus on improving the quality of education, and the evidence of a significant word gap in UK schools, it seems to me […]
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The Oxford Language Report: Why Closing the Word Gap Matters found evidence that an increasing number of children in UK schools have a limited vocabulary – a word gap – which is holding back their learning. The report brings together the thoughts of a number of leading academics and practitioners, based on market research with over 1,300 primary and secondary teachers. Over half of those surveyed reported […]
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In 2018 we surveyed over 1,300 primary and secondary teachers about their experiences of the Word Gap in schools and collated our findings in the Oxford Language Report. Following on from this research, we partnered with Teachit to develop downloadable packs of resources and initiatives that can be used in the classroom. The Read more