This book is fabulous (and fully deserving of this long review). It is filled with theory (around 60%) but it also has lots of practical strategies, which I can actually use in the classroom. I am overjoyed and I hope these strategies work because children deserve to be proficient in vocabulary and are able to deal with the range of vocabulary they encounter in the classroom. These children deserve to understand a range of vocabulary and deserve to enjoy vocabulary. I hope this book helps me do this. The word gap – or vocabulary gap as it is also known – is having an enormous impact on our students’ futures.

Pronunciation may seem trivial, but it has a positive physical implication; saying a word actually imprints it on the muscles of the ear and jaw. This is known as kinesthetic learning and should not be overlooked. Beyond muscle memory, saying a word in your own voice can be a first step toward making it your own.The vocabulary gap is perhaps more difficult to spot at Key Stage 3 than it is in the earlier years.By this stage, students will have 7 years of schooling under their belt, yet, when questioned directly, will struggle to define words they should be very familiar with by now.Exacerbated by Covid interruptions, teachers are faced with an enormous challenge.How can we inspire adolescents to appreciate the importance of expanding their vocabulary, without embarrassing them in front of their peers? The barrier of curriculum time came up frequently; we accepted the need for flexibility and for adaptations to be made depending on the subject. Some now set completion of the Frayer model for homework after talking through the word in class, for example.

I wanted to ensure that this book offered insights and practical solutions for teachers at every key stage and phase.To support this, I have added free resources to my blog to run alongside the book – making it more user friendly. I will surely add to the resources, but you can now access the following at RESOURCES available on the main menu: Reardon, Sean F. “The widening academic achievement gap between the rich and the poor: New evidence and possible explanations” in R. Murnane & G. Duncan (Eds.), Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality and the Uncertain Life Chances of Low-Income Children, New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2011 To promote this culture, I led whole school inset training in 2018 which introduced staff to tiered vocabulary and the demands of writing like a scientist/geographer/literary critic. Tier 3 vocabulary teaching can be regarded a key strand of the science curriculum for example. However, demonstrating what writing like a historian looks like and how to use appropriate Tier 2 vocabulary to achieve this was very well received. This led to 1:1 sessions with heads of departments, most notably Art. For instance, we devised word lists that students might use to describe colour, but which would also enhance descriptive writing in English. Thus ‘vivid’ suddenly appeared in almost every piece of Year 7 writing to describe setting! This can lead to cliché but nonetheless, students are finding it easier to make connections across the curriculum and bring wider thinking to their learning. This book offers a great overview of the research on learning vocabulary, and practical advice　on how to apply this research in the classroom." – Daisy Christodoulou, Research and Development Manager, ARK Schools, UK

Experts and Partners

Featuring advice on using word banks, making links between key terms, teaching etymology and morphology, and vocabulary for exams, the English section also includes strategies to promote reading for pleasure and reading aloud, ideas to encourage word play, and activities and resources to develop students’ written vocabulary – both creative and academic. In simple terms, we know that school students need something like 50,000 words in their personal lexicon to flourish in secondary and beyond. A primary school-age child is typically learning at a rate of around 4,000 or 5,000 new words a year. How can we supercharge this vocabulary development?

The teaching of word parts (morphology) and word histories (etymology) are some of most well-evidenced methods of explicit vocabulary teaching, but done well, we hand over the baton to our pupils and they become ‘word conscious’, spying word parts and word families each time they read, talk and write. Faced with a complex word like ‘oligarchy’, pupils can recognise the familiar root‘-archy’, meaning‘rulership’. It offers an essential hook to understand the word, offering more familiar related words like ‘monarchy’.

Your thoughts

Grappling with how to support students to meet the increased demands of the curriculum was beginning to feel like an insurmountable task, when suddenly, the solution became clear. Boost vital vocabulary knowledge, vocabulary breadth and depth, and a learner’s ability to connect words Understand the importance of academic vs. everyday words and cross-curricular words vs. subject-specific words

Explain. Carefully pronounce the new word, write the word, offer a student-friendly definition and multiple examples. Results across all monitoring methods were positive and students recognised they were being taught vocabulary across all subjects. Both implicit approaches (e.g. reading stories to children and promoting reading for pleasure) and explicit approaches to teaching vocabulary (e.g. directly teaching new vocabulary) are essential for developing and broadening children’s language. There is also a need to explore vocabulary in reading, writing, for spoken language and across the curriculum. Practical strategies in the classroom We completed learning walks of vocabulary teaching to see it in practice, followed up with a student-voice survey looking at the consistency and frequency of teaching.One of the key points to consider at Key Stage 3 is the impact the vocabulary gap has on every aspect of the student’s life – from building relationships, to furthering their education and career.The skill of making and maintaining good relationships is reliant on a decent vocabulary.The impact of our social skills and communication interventions has been immediately evident. We have seen young people becoming more reflective and articulate as a direct result of these interventions.