industry & reform
Say the word
How teachers can explicitly teach vocabulary across the curriculum .
By Danielle Norton
The need to explicitly teach vocabulary to our students is vastly underestimated in secondary schools .
For decades , teachers and academics have been researching the problem of literacy in schools so we know that many students don ’ t really have enough words in their everyday lexicon to be considered adequately literate to access the whole curriculum .
Melanie Henry , experienced classroom teacher , PhD candidate , and specialist consultant and researcher in literacy and learning in secondary school education , believes that it ’ s the responsibility of each school to explicitly teach students the words and the phrases that will open the doors to accessing written language . “ We need to give students more opportunities to learn subject specific vocabulary and we need to teach students specific academic language that transcends disciplines so that they can gain entry to the subject knowledge ,” says Ms Henry .
Ms Henry ’ s suggestion for schools is to consider including a vocabulary component to their scope and sequence for instruction and highlight the key words that students need to know to be successful for a particular unit or across a year that relate specifically to a topic taught .
For example , in a unit on volcanoes in Geography , they ’ ll need to know tectonic , seismologist , and magma , but they ’ ll also need academic language like evaluate , compare , describe .
A school wide interdisciplinary approach for teaching academic language is required . Teaching students the same words ( e . g . compare and contrast , make a comparison ) in different ways in different subjects helps them develop a strong understanding of how to use these words .
Giving students instructions about the meaning of phrases and how to use them is also important . E . g ., moreover , consequently , it ’ s a common misconception , it is generally accepted . Students don ’ t necessarily have the language to understand what these phrases mean or use them in their writing , unless we explicitly teach them .
Vocabulary needs to be taught explicitly by subject teachers too . The language needed for Ancient History is different to that needed for Physical Education and different again from the language needed for Psychology . At the end of their secondary academic journey all subjects have a year 12 subject that has a written exam and all of the Year 12 subject teachers require their students to be able to write in that discipline . Our students need to be prepared for these written tasks and the specific discipline language is part of each subject ’ s responsibility to teach .
Melanie Henry ’ s tips for explicit vocabulary instruction
Choose a word ( or two ) for the lesson and make sure that it appears regularly throughout the lesson .
• Introduce the word .
• Say the word .
• Get students to say the word .
• Offer them a definition .
• Give an example of how the word is used .
• Read a passage of text in which the word is used .
• Give lots of opportunities for writing the word during the lesson . I . e . use the word in sentence starters . You can test the students ’ understanding in this way . E . g ., Erupt . The crowd erupted in protest . The volcano is at risk of eruption . The audience erupted when Beyonce came onstage . The pimple on my face is about to erupt .
Give students lots of examples to illustrate how the word can be used so that they understand how it can be used in the topic but also how it can be used in other contexts . “ We don ’ t want them to get stuck on the idea that one word has one meaning when we know that this is not the case ,” Ms Henry says .
Ms Henry also suggests that teachers use derivatives of the same word . Evacuate , evacuation , evacuated , evacuating . “ There ’ s no reason not to teach students all of the words at once . You ’ re actually multiplying the number of words that the students have access to ,” she says .
Impromptu teaching moments occur too , of course , and should always be embraced , but teaching vocabulary explicitly is really key . You , as the teacher , then know exactly what instruction the students are getting . If students have free writing or a really open-ended task , it ’ s really hard for the teacher to know what the input was and whether the students have learnt the thing that was intended for them on that day . ■
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