13/06/2025 Vocabulary (and decoding)
We started in our breakout group and it was great to hear others' vocab lessons went. Kiri shared a spreadsheet for people to add their lessons to and this will be a great resource.
I was not aware that by the time children start school, those from high decile families have heard 30 million more words than those in lower decile families. Of course all teachers are well aware of this disparity but to see it as such a disturbing statistic is shocking.
Dorothy then talked about ways to use Google doc tools to help with teaching vocab. I didn't realise there were so many options in the 'insert' tab on docs. I had a quick explore and will certainly explore this in more depth.
I only scored 2/5 on the following check so need to incorporate pre-reading activities, independent follow up and making target words visible:
Naomi then talked about various methods of robust vocab instruction. The 'Spotlight' activity looks particularly useful. I'm going to have to go back to
the slideshow as we sped through it and there is much valuable information there including some great activities.
This is a good reminder of, 'use it or lose it':
As teachers we needs to continually reinforce the learning that has taken place if the knowledge is to be retained.
We then went back to our breakout groups and practised initiating a discussion/lesson and arriving at a consensus which was a great success (this was based on how we develop all 4 elements of vocabulary instruction in our classrooms.)
Janet then discussed in depth the concept of word consciousness. The following slide is an excellent reminder/summary of ways to enact word consciousness:
We went back to our breakout groups to do a fun word play activity. I'll be using these as brain breaks in class.
Naomi then went into detail about robust vocab knowledge. Here are 5 important principles of this:
In our groups we then did a tier 2 word activity. This was very useful as it showed how much text could be explored in even a short piece of text.
Nick and I were then a breakout group and did an interactive robust vocab activity which will be useful in the classroom.
Kiri then took a deep dive into teaching questioning. I really liked this slide as it's a good reminder of the importance of teaching students to question:
Janet then guided us through a close examination of teaching morphology. I'll need to go back and look at these slides again as there is a lot of information, and there are many great teaching resources, but obviously teaching morphology is a valuable tool in the teaching of reading. I like this format for an activity and of course this could be used to teach prefixes as well:
It's been another full on day with much valuable information. It's been a good chance to reflect on strategies I currently use and to look at new strategies that I can add to my teaching tools kete.
