Understanding Vocabulary
Vocabulary Learning
We need to continuously teach our young people vocabulary. The more words they know, the more they will be able to understand what they hear and read; and the better they will be able to say what they want to when speaking or writing. Some of our young people have significantly impaired vocabulary which will already put them at a disadvantage. There are many reason why young people don’t develop a comprehensive vocabulary. It is important to continue to explicitly teach vocabulary all through education.
Teaching Vocabulary
1. Select the words you want to teach (use the Word knowledge Form to determine which words they do and do not know). Choose no more then 10 at a time.
2. Use the explicit teaching tools (see Vocabulary learning tools)
We could discretely assess their knowledge and use through clever teaching or we could explicitly assess it using a word score system (this is based on the work of Beck, McKeown and Kucan, 2002).
WHICH WORDS?
Vocabulary can be profiled into 3 tiers. The first tier should not usually require teaching, the top tier may require teaching but due to the low frequency of these words they can be forgotten easily. The middle tier is the most important tier and the words in this section are the most useful (they support the learning of the specialised tier 3 words).
You can Google tier 2 words and a vast amount of choices will be offered
Word Aware
Word Aware is a structured whole school approach to promote the vocabulary development of ALL children. The focus is on whole class learning and the resource is particular good for young people who start at a disadvantage – including children with Developmental Language Disorder, Special Educational Needs and those who speak English as an additional language.
This approach is full of practical ideas that can be easily applied in busy classrooms to develop both spoken and written vocabulary.
Word Learning Score
This is a great tool for determining what words your young people know before you begin teaching. Simply add your target words to the list and ask your young people to score themsleves.
Word score template.pdfWord wheels/ Word maps
Word-finding wheels and word maps are graphic organisers that promote vocabulary learning. They focus on the phonological (how the word sounds) as well as the semantic (the meaning) as well as making links to other information that a young person might know. This, along with a visual representation, and an example of how the word is used in a sentence can increase a young persons chance of learning and understanding a new word.
It can be helpful to build up a vocabulary book or set of flash cards of any new words learned to refer back to regularly to ensure they stay remebered!
Below are some examples to look at and blank graphic organisers for you to downlaod and use.
CTC - Word wheel.pdfWord Wheel
CTC - Word-finding wheel.pdfWord Finding Wheel
CTC - Word map.pdf