Dive into the rich world of vocabulary with my blog series. Explore the art of explicit vocabulary teaching, the deep relationship between vocabulary and reading, along with the fascinating realms of etymology and morphology. Discover innovative strategies to cultivate 'word consciousness' and ignite excitement about language. Whether you're a teacher, leader, or avid reader, my curated content offers a treasure trove of insights and practical tips to enrich your vocabulary journey.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that vocabulary knowledge is crucial for pupils’ school success. Pupils are language sponges, learning thousands of words each year. Like increases in a child’s height, it is a slow but inexorable development. On a daily basis it is near-imperceptible, but when you begin
What connections can you make between these words? Are there any patterns of meaning or word families you notice? Could you even detect the author who penned these words? These disembodied words are drawn from the Charles Dickens classic, ‘A Christmas Carol’. I have used the word cloud as a
Every teacher recognises the vital role of academic vocabulary to access the school curriculum and go onto succeed. Put simply, the more words you know, the further you’ll go. Words are crucial tools to crow-bar open the curriculum for every pupil and they provide the means for self-expression and
When you explore the history and roots of a word – the etymology – you draw upon a rich story that can unlock understanding for our pupils in science, maths, geography, and more. It can add a layer of understanding that helps our novice pupils hook into a tricky academic term that
This academic year, over at Teach Secondary, I have the great pleasure of sharing a ‘Vocabulary Clinic’ article each month. It is a quick burst of vocabulary ideas and insights. You can find PDF copies freely available to download from my RESOURCES PAGE. I’m delighted to say that there
A version of this article was originally published in the excellent ‘Teach Secondary‘ magazine – you can subscribe HERE. It is well worth a read! Controversies and complaints about spelling are centuries old. In his Preface to ‘A Dictionary of the English Language’, in 1755, Samuel Johnson derided writers for their
Words are all around us. They are legion, ubiquitous and omnipresent in our daily lives. They live in families, possess histories, slide and break into parts, and connect across worlds, separating and connecting us. And yet, curiously, few of us know how we acquire them, learn them, connect them, and
As a teacher who writes about the importance of literacy and vocabulary – and one who works with countless teachers across the country – I find myself talking repeatedly about the issue of the ‘word gap’ in our classrooms. Again and again, I am faced with the glaring examples of the problem
The ‘Frayer model‘ is a long-standing graphic organiser that has been deployed in classrooms with success for decades (it was first conceived Dorothy Frayer and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin). It is a simple but effective model to help students to organise their understanding of a new academic
The web is full of websites on vocabulary: good, bad and ugly. Here are six of my favourite free vocabulary websites that I think are useful for teachers and students alike: 1. Describing Words This website has a simple premise: punch in a noun and you get countless descriptive words,
For a long time now I have been reading about vocabulary development. After teaching English Language and English Literature for over a decade and a half (including child language acquisition), I came to the stark realisation that I didn’t know enough about how children not only learnt to read,
A 10-year-old child who is a good reader will encounter something like 1 million words a year (around 12 novels), but crucially, approximately 20,000 of those words will prove unfamiliar (Oakhill et al. 2015). It is important then to support our pupils to develop an array of independent word