The necessity of a school-wide approach

 Understand characteristics of effective vocabulary instruction  Consider Marzano’s Six-Step approach to DIRECT vocabulary instruction  Consider Paul Nation’s view on vocabulary building  View and consider some resources along the way

 ‘When ALL teachers in a school focus on building academic vocabulary in the same way, the school has a powerful comprehensive approach’ (Mazano 2009)  A word must be met up to 15 times in meaningful contexts before it is completely known (Nation, 1997)  Students need to be deliberately taught to learn the spelling of words with unpredictable spelling (Nation 1997)  Words are consistently misunderstood by retaining inappropriate familiar meanings in a new context eg:material

 Spoken  Written  Collocations  Grammatical patterns  Frequency  Appropriateness  Associations  Concept

 Root Word  Ideas  Definition  Sound  Family  Friends (associations)  Patterns  Situations How might this be of value in your classroom/learning area?

 It covers important aspects of word learning usually neglected.  It is simple, requires little preparation yet is effective.  As a tool it can quickly build up in-depth knowledge of 10 important words or more a week ie: teacher and student-centred activity  Its consistent use can lead to a permanently activated awareness of the dimensions of word learning  It can be explicitly linked to vocabulary needs in the curriculum

 Step 1: Teacher will give a description, explanation or example of new term  Step 2: Teacher will ask the learner to give a description, explanation or example of new terms in his/her OWN words  Step 3: Teacher will ask learner to draw a picture, symbol or locate a graphic to represent new term  Step 4: The learner will participate in activities that provide more knowledge of the words

 Step 5: The learner will discuss new term with other learners  Step 6: The learner will participate in games/activities/tasks that provide further reinforcement of new term Let’s take a closer look....