Word Aware (Spiral Bind): Teaching vocabulary across the day, across the curriculum

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Once a word is taught, it is placed on a word wall. These words then need to be reviewed (repeated) by the class in both their writing or their spoken language (both needed in the right context). In addition, we play games to consolidate our understanding of these words and will send out a list of words (fridge words) we will teach each half term to allow you to discuss and review these words with your child at home.

This approach is full of practical and inspiring ideas that can be easily applied by busy classroom practitioners to develop both spoken and written vocabulary. It is taken from the brand new edition of Word Aware 1: Teaching Vocabulary Across the Day, Across the Curriculum by Stephen Parsons and Anna Brannigan and provides you with a chance to take a look inside this much loved resource. A practical session on administrating formal and informal assessments with Paediatric and adult client groups It provides a structured approach to promote vocabulary development in all children. It details a comprehensive and structured approach to learning with a multitude of activities and lesson plans. It adopts a whole school approach but is equally effective for specific classes and groups or individual learners. It is an effective tool to teach children who speak English as an additional language. It particularly suitable for Key Stages 1 and 2.Step-on words – these are words that are very specific to the topic but are not so important for understanding the topic and are less likely to come up frequently. We are working in pertnership with Lift Lessons. They have developed amazing videos on science concepts for 6-14 year olds. A great resource. At Thinking Talking we are dedicated to improving children and young people’s language and communication skills, but we understand that time is precious, so we develop time efficient interventions that work.

In July 2014, I went on the Word Aware training delivered by Anna Branagan to see if the strategies could be used within SEN intervention groups. However it soon became apparent that all of our children would benefit from the approaches used! The training was very informative and focused on many aspects of vocabulary teaching and learning. It gave lots of practical activities and games to support the acquisition of vocabulary and to enable children to develop ways of working out what words mean. We also felt that these methods would build on the Read, Write, Inc ‘power words’ strategy that was already embedded in Key Stage 1. This is a highly practical, comprehensive resource designed to support Early Years practitioners in the provision of effective vocabulary development in preschool children of all abilities. It is based on the same theory as the ‘Word Aware – Book 1 above but has adapted for Early Years. Anna Branagan is a Speech and Language Therapist. In Gloucestershire, Anna works within a Youth Support Team supporting vulnerable young people. In Worcestershire, she works within mainstream schools supporting inclusive practice. Anna trained at Leeds Metropolitan University 25 years ago. She is the co-author of bestselling Speechmark resources Language for Thinking (second edition, 2017), Word Aware 1 (second edition, 2022) Word Aware 2 (2017) and Language for Behaviour and Emotions (2020). It is based on a system called STAR (Blachowicz and Fisher, 2010) and I think this process is a really helpful way to think of vocabulary teaching. You can’t teach a word one day and then forget about it – it needs to be a much more systematic approach. STAR stands for Select Teach Activate Review. It obviously isn’t realistic to sum up the whole of the approach in one blog post, but I thought I would talk today about each of these 4 aspects a little bit. In the book, Stephen and Anna apply this to topics, literacy, concepts and emotions, but the principles are the same and I’ll talk about topic vocabulary here. At Hobbayne, we understand that words are important. We all need to understand and use a wide range of vocabulary to succeed at school and in life. To progress with reading children need to understand the words they decode. To write well they need a wide and varied use of words. To understand all subjects including maths, science and social studies they need to understand the words that are used. We want to have fun with words. We seek to promote speaking and listening as these are foundation skills for reading and writing. We are all very excited about this new programme and where the approach has been trialled children have enjoyed the experience.

In summary, Word Aware is a great resource for anyone working with Early Years children and I would highly recommend it. It has a good mix of theory and practical activities which can be put into practice immediately with education staff and parents.”

The teacher will select the appropriate words to teach using the Word Aware approach. These will be really useful words which are likely to be encountered again in spoken language or reading. The average adult will have a good level of knowledge of the word. Topic words will be taught where they are core to topic learning. Language for Behaviour and Emotions’ has been developed with Melanie Cross. This practical, interactive resource is designed to be used by professionals who work with children and young people who have Social, Emotional and Mental Health needs and Speech,Language and Communication needs.Waldfogel and Washbrook, (2010) found a two year gap at aged 5 years between the wealthiest and the poorest. And as Ford-Connors and Paratore (2015) highlight ‘students who enter classrooms with a low store of vocabulary knowledge are unlikely to acquire complex knowledge through simple exposure’. The book starts with a detailed, interesting and clearly referenced introduction, which would be very useful for teaching staff and is a great refresher for SLTs. I like the fact that the approach is designed for the whole class, so it’s inclusive and that there is a strong emphasis on the importance of Adult Child Interaction.”

Word Aware can be delivered as a whole-school INSET training day or as a series of twilight sessions. Choose your main focus:This free chapter will guide teachers on how they can support vocabulary development in all children. It introduces a structured framework called Word Aware, explaining the theory behind the approach, the key principles of effective vocabulary teaching and how it can be implemented in the classroom. It also includes activities that can be put into practice immediately. Word Aware continues to have a supportive application in secondary schools as pupils begin to require an understanding of specialist and subject-specific vocabulary. This rigorously tried-and-tested approach is an outstanding resource that will be an essential addition to any early years’ setting or preschool classroom. It is also an important addition to the materials used by speech and language therapists. It is particularly suitable for ages 3 to 5+