All words are not valued equally. Instead, what we want children to learn is the language of school. For many children, this is a foreign language.” (p. 68). Stahl and Stahl (2004) 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. Limited vocabulary prevents students from accessing their learning, developing self-esteem, and enjoying meaningful social interactions, severely affecting their future life chances. And over 60% of secondary teachers surveyed for the Oxford Language Report Why Closing the Word Gap Matters believe this vocabulary deficit is increasing. 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. Boost vital vocabulary knowledge, vocabulary breadth and depth, and a learner’s ability to connect words

This is important for teaching because we can’t teach children every word that we think they might need to know. It is more feasible to teach crucial vocabulary alongside these regularities and patterns. CTVG – 7 Strategies for Exploring Unfamiliar Vocabulary’– this is a companion resource to the SEEC model, offering accessible strategies to Explore an unfamiliar word. Achieving consistency takes relentless effort but we take staff workload seriously, and the goal is to improve literacy via vocabulary in a way that works for our students and staff. We’re still on our journey to achieving that. What impact have you seen so far? We also offer 15 minute reading interventions with supporting staff – these are split into three categories: fluency, comprehension, and dyslexia.For fluency, a student chooses a text from the appropriate level and will read it until they are fluent.For comprehension, two or three students read a short text, discuss it, and then ask each other set comprehension questions.For dyslexia, we follow a morphophonological approach; explicitly teaching etymology, phonics, and inviting the students to ‘play’ with the words on the worksheets provided.We have seen huge improvements in reading ages following our reading interventions, but have only recently split them into these three categories.We are keen to see the impact of this in next year’s data collection.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. This book brings together research evidence and teaching experience to provide practical knowledge and resources for primary and secondary teachers. Quigley draws on research to distinguish academic from everyday words; and cross-curricular words (for example, “analyse”) from subject-specific words (for example, “photosynthesis”). Vocabulary knowledge involves information about spoken words and their meanings. If we don’t attend to closing the vocabulary gap early, then students like James will fulfil a dismal prophesy of struggle and failure in school.

When assistant headteacher Sarah Eggleton decided to give literacy a much-needed boost in her school, with a vocabulary push across all departments, she chose to do it via the explicit teaching of high-level language and decoding tools in all classes. Another hugely successful initiative is tied to a SOL for year 9 to write a speech ‘Taking a Stand.’ The best of these is performed at the annual Awards evening for parents. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those students who have been successful in Rotary Club, ESU or in-house public speaking competitions in the past have all gone on to be selected for the Senior Students prefect team.

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The word gap – or vocabulary gap as it is also known – is having an enormous impact on our students’ futures. In Closing the Vocabulary Gap,the authorexplores the increased demands of an academic curriculum and how closing the vocabulary gap between our ‘word poor’ and ‘word rich’ students could prove the vital difference between school failure and success.