Explicitly teaching how to use Context to give Definitions.

I enjoy reading blog posts where teachers break down and share a lesson that they felt worked well. So I'm going to do that!

My pupils - like many others - struggle with a limited tier 2 vocabulary. I have posted about a strategy to explicitly teach tier 2 vocabulary, and space it. Standing on the shoulders of giants, it's built on Matt Pinkett's work and the brilliant Bringing Words to Life. Miss R shared OUP's Closing the Word Gap activities this week on Twitter - they look fab too. And I've got the Vocabulary Ninja book on order too!

Matt's strategy of teaching 4 new words per week absolutely worked. There was a clear sense of satisfaction from the pupils as they acquired and remembered new vocabulary - I simply found the time it took to prepare the resources quite time consuming! Around the same time, someone posted about Bedrock Vocabulary on Twitter so I investigated and decided to trial it for the last term.

Aside from some technical issues which can be frustrating (and don't get be started on the drip-feed setting that you have to remember to manually disable every month in order to let your pupils do more than one Bedrock lesson per day) I like Bedrock. I like the range of online activities provided and I like the short passages that they source the vocabulary from. There has been a significant upgrade recently which includes humans reading all the passages/definitions and better spacing of vocabulary to improve retention over time.

Bedrock is my longer-term strategy for increasing vocabulary and therefore their ability to understand unseen passages. (Increasing pupils' reading for pleasure is my longest-term strategy!) However - we're within a month of the IGCSE English exam and one of the questions asks pupils to define a particular underlined word and then use this to inform their analysis. So I need a shorter term strategy too!

I have to admit I have always just told pupils to "put the words in context" and to work out what they mean without really unpicking exactly what that means or involves. I'm sure many of you are like DUH. I know...

I saw this resource from @MissKempEnglish and this got the ball rolling, or "lightbulb" flickering...

And I liked the specificity of the strategies . Although I didn't end up using this resource, it definitely inspired my thinking.

Teaching Sequence - about 1 hour

Learning Objective:

To learn strategies to define words I don't know.

Key Words: definition, synonym, antonym, context

Opening Discussion:

Show example of the question that we're focusing on:

Ask: If the word that is underlined is "exhausted" - how do you feel? What would you write as the definition? [This elicited generally positive, confident and accurate responses]

Ask: what about if the underlined word is "acquiesced" - how do you feel? What would you write? [This elicited reactions akin to the shrug emojji, one pupil asked for me to put it in a sentence. I refused. One asked me to tell them what it means, I refused.]

Explain: Okay. So we don't know what this word means yet. I'm not telling you. I'm not helping you. [I wrote it on the board] - by the end of this lesson YOU will have used the new strategies to define this word.

Activating relevant prior knowledge:

Remind me: Synonyms are two words that... what about antonyms?

Can anyone give me an example?

Pupils then spent 4 minutes completing as many examples from this worksheet as possible - they didn't need to work sequentially down the list and they also didn't NEED to use the word banks. I found the worksheet online -but I can't remember where to credit, apologies!

Key Word Check:

Ask: Remind me, Context = information about the ____ _______ which helps you understand a _______ (real world, text - this is a simple definition we have drilled fairly frequently.)

Today, context = information from the sentence or paragraph which helps you understand a word.

New information - Video:

We're going to watch a video which teaches you four ways to use context to help you work out the definition of an unknown word.

The first four strategies start with:

1. D__________

2. E__________

3. S_________/A_________

4. S________________

So make sure you have them down by the end of the video.

We watched this video and I have to say, I think it's great! I paused it each time before the explanation and definition were given so that they were actively participating.

Two more strategies

5. I_____________

6. R_____________

Explain: I want to give two more strategies which are inference and recognition - how does "solitude" and "solo" help you understand "soliloquy?

Isolated practice:

Pupils completed this worksheet:

When I asked pupils what they had put for "acquiesced" they came up with:

• approved

• agreed

• accepted

Note - I took feedback from the whole class (we do have small classes) before giving any affirming or correcting feedback. I was pretty thrilled with their definitions - as were they! I went back to the white board where I had written up this word as the "test" for today and we celebrated that we had worked it out.

Applied practice:

Taking examples from a past paper, I first formatted it into the same table format as the isolated practice they'd just done.

Once they had completed the definition, they flipped the sheet over to complete the examples laid out exactly as they are in the exam:

This yielded far better and higher quality results than previously.

Two days later

I had been happily telling a colleague about what a satisfying lesson we had had, and she (@just_IrinaT) said "Yes, but will they remember tomorrow?" - good point. I started Friday's lesson with this starter:

On the back were these "clues" as differentiation.

They all got 4/6. Most got 5/6 without too much effort - 'prudent' threw them and actually I think that might be because of the imperfect clue I gave them, but either way we'll revisit it.

It's not earth-shattering stuff, far from it, but it was teaching sequence that really *worked* so I thought I'd share! One of the pupils said "We should have done this in Year 9... " and of course, he's quite right! Better late than never, right?!

Copies of the powerpoint and worksheet can be found here.