: Explicit Vocabulary Teaching: What Now? Embedding newly-learnt vocabulary: what the Vocabulary in Action poster could look like in practice.

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Explicit Vocabulary Teaching: What Now?

Embedding newly-learnt vocabulary: what the Vocabulary in Action poster could look like in practice.

by North London Alliance Research School
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Matthew Western

This blog was written by Matthew Western

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Matthew Western, Leader of Learning at Torriano Primary, the lead school in the North London Alliance Research School, explores the strategies that we can use to deepen pupil understanding and increase retention following explicit vocabulary teaching.

Picture the following example in a Year 3 literacy lesson.

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But will they?

And of those who do, how well will they be able to use it in the context of their writing?

Will those who use it to describe the mayor be able to use the word indignant in a different context in the future?

Teaching new words is important; we know that a robust vocabulary underpins and improves our ability to communicate via listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Yet, the explicit teaching of ambitious vocabulary does not guarantee retention and deep learning of new words for our pupils. In fact, exposition of new vocabulary could be thought of as the beginning of the journey of a word. We must then turn our attention to how we embed recently-taught vocabulary in order for pupils to consolidate secure understandings.

It may be useful to think of new vocabulary as floating vessels in our sea of understanding. Our aim is to create bridges between these isolated vessels (the newly-introduced words) and our metaphorical islands, which are home to our existing knowledge and known concepts. Without opportunity to build these bridges of meaning and connection, new words are at risk of sinking.

Let’s take the word vessel itself as an example.

A year 6 child encounters the word vessel in a literacy text, set in the First World War, and so the teacher introduces the word vessel as a synonym for boat.

While this is correct, it doesn’t build a particularly strong bridge to the child’s prior knowledge – particularly if this is their first time encountering the word vessel in the context of ships. As a polysemous word, vessel is layered and layers deserve unpicking.

In science, children learn that vessel is the naming word for a tube that carries blood around the body.

In transport, a vessel is the name of a ship or large boat.

And traditionally, vessel’ refers to a hollow container, especially one used to hold liquid, such as a bowl. It’s this definition that most successfully encompasses the others together in shared meaning: vessels transport.

The implication, then, is that we can provide activities that require students to process the meanings of words in deep and thoughtful ways.

IM 4

This vocabulary-specific adaptation of a Frayer model can be completed with pupils through shared modelling or as an independent task following high-quality talk around the meaning and applications of a new word.

It is an example of how we can support pupils to organise their new knowledge, make links to existing concepts explicit and think hard about meanings, by identifying and explaining appropriate word usage. An important element of this vocabulary-specific knowledge organiser is that it requires pupils to acknowledge dictionary definitions of their new word before developing their own bespoke definitions.

Exposure to rich language is important; however, using definitions that pupils cannot make sense of – either because of limited connections to prior knowledge or because vocabulary in the definition itself requires defining – can pose unnecessary challenge.

With this in mind, we introduce, and encourage pupils to define words, through explanations in everyday connected language alongside dictionary definitions.

The EEF’s Vocabulary in Action resource
(adapted from research by Beck and McKeown) offers a summary of the principles that we can use to inform choices around teacher modelling, explanation and pupil practice in vocabulary learning.

IM 3
The principles of Deep Processing and Bespoke Definitions underpin the rationale for the vocabulary-adapted Frayer Model above.

High-quality talk is a powerful vehicle for enabling children to articulate and form deeper understandings. Providing opportunities for pupils to unpick their thinking at this level in low-stakes discussions and talk tasks is a valuable way of enacting the principles from the Vocabulary in Action resource.

Immediate interaction’ can take the form of asking pupils to use new words in sentences or engage in contextualised debates and discussions. These high-quality talk opportunities benefit from being enriched with visuals, contentious talking points, manipulatives to make talk visible, sentence stems and vocabulary banks to scaffold pupil thinking.

In the example below, the teacher uses a talk opportunity to provide pupils with a platform to consolidate their understanding of the new word indignant’ by considering its possible applications in context.

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Thought-provoking or contentious activities such as these promote active interest, which refers to providing examples, situations and questions that interest children and promote engagement with new words. Whether that be through role-play in the early years, purposeful discussion opportunities or the use of graphic organisers such as the Frayer model.

If we know that explicitly teaching and introducing ambitious vocabulary doesn’t guarantee the learning or retention of said vocabulary, then we know that the subsequent embedding activities are where the magic happens’.

What are the implications for what the journey of a word could look like in our classrooms?


Recommendation 1 from the EEF KS2 Literacy Guidance Report
puts forward that we can extend pupils’ vocabulary by explicitly teaching new words, providing repeated exposure to new words, and providing opportunities for pupils to use new words. It’s through these deliberate opportunities for practice and powerful engagement that we can anchor new words into both the understanding and the language repertoire of our pupils.

References:

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G. and Kucan, L. (2013) Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction, New York: Guildford Press

Education Endowment Foundation. (2021) Improving Literacy in Key Stage 2 (Online)

Education Endowment Foundation. (2021) Improving Literacy in Key Stage 1 (Online)

Education Endowment Foundation. (2021) Preparing for Literacy (Online)

Reynolds, A. (2023) Vocabulary in Action poster: A tool for teachers (Online)


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