Around 10 years ago I read Isabella Beck’s Bringing Words to Life and started to implement a vocabulary strategy for the then department I was running.  Two schools later and a fabulous session at the Festival of Education in Bangkok, Thailand, I’ve decided I need to bring vocab back. This is especially important for my current learners who are much more varied in their language proficiency with pupils in one class ranging from below A1 to B2.

So here is a short blog, after a few requests for the resource, on how I teach vocabulary.

Selection of Vocabulary

Like many educators, I focus on Tier 2 vocabulary taken from the texts we teach.  As I read through the texts ahead of teaching, I identify the Tier 2 words, and then if needed condense these down with future utility being the deciding factor.  It was recommended at the session I attended at the Festival that pupils in KS3 can cope with 6-10 new words at a time, which gives a framework when thinking about the teaching of a whole unit.

Post Festival, I have started to collate all of the Tier 2 vocabulary our pupils are exposed to throughout the year on a tracker to help me plan for the year.  Here is the year 7 one I am building:

Lesson structure

Vocabulary features within our weekly grammar / language lesson and takes half of the lesson 15-20 minutes.

Each lesson starts with a recap of words learnt previously.

These are done on rotation so all Tier 2 words taught are returned to. Pupils have to offer their own definition of each word and then we go through as a class.

Then I introduce the new words for the week. I start by saying the word and have pupils repeat the pronounciation of the word after me.  I then read a pupil friendly definition of the word to the pupils.  I have found Cobuild the best for this and have used their site for years to help me with definitions: Collins English Dictionary | Definitions, Translations, Example Sentences and Pronunciations (collinsdictionary.com)

Most recently, having read the ResearchEd guide to EAL, amongst other books, I also include a Vietnamese translation of the word.  The majority of my pupils are Vietnamese and research indicates that we should draw upon a pupils’ Language 1 to aid the development of Language 2 so this is one way in which I am trying to help my less proficient pupils.  Now I haven’t always quite got it right and the pupils have laughed at some of my choices but from January I will have a TA who will be able to check my translations in advance. A number of pupils kept asking me for the word class of the word so I also include this.  Of course, sometimes this can be problematic as words can take on different forms so I go back to my text and the context in which it will be introduced to replicate for this task.

Pupils then copy each new word out four times.  This is to get them practising the spelling of these key words.

Once they have done this, I show them four images and they have to match the new word up to the correct image.  A bigger, more colourful version of each image is shown on the board to aid this.

Then pupils practise using the new words in a sentence.  What I was finding though is that, on occasions, pupils’ grammatical accuracy in using the word was mismatched so I introduced a modelled sentence to help this. I often use CHAT GTP to formulate a sentence that uses the word (appropriate for a 12 year old, as a defining criteria) and embolden the new word in the sentence. This gives the less proficient pupils a crutch to fall back on.

Finally, as a challenge task, pupils can identify synonyms and antonyms for each word.

Again, all of this takes place during our weekly grammar / language lesson and we have it down to about 20 minutes of the lesson.  We then follow this with some deliberate practice around a core skill we have been developing in the topic lesson.

Next term, I will be building the vocabulary into our weekly retention blooket as well, as another prong to reinforce vocabulary previously taught.

A full copy of one Y7 resource is available here: Y7 Grammar L3