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

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Set two: shorter version for families who are home-schooling. Involve the whole family and play the ones you like. The SENCO role was established nearly thirty years ago in the SEN Code of Practice 1994 where it stated that all mainstream schools must have a SENCO responsible for coordinating services around children with SEN.

Book 1: Teaching Vocabulary across the Day, across the Curriculum (age suitability: 5-11+) – Second Edition – Sep 2021 Language for Thinking’ and ‘Language for Behaviour and Emotions’ courses require access to the book during the course.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+

Review – There are many, many fun ways to review taught vocabulary in the Word Aware book. There are great ideas of questions to ask at the end of the lesson as well, which are more interesting and useful than “what does x word mean?” For example, “when do you think you might use this word again?” or “how do you think you will remember this word”. As with anything, I think the key is to keep it fun, varied and engaging – no-one learns well when they’re bored! 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. At Thinking Talking we focus on what works in the classroom to support children’s development of speech, language and communication. For many children, particularly those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) or those whose home language isn’t English (ELL or EAL learners), the vocabulary of the classroom can be a barrier to learning. This book outlines how to best support these children who require extra help, offering concrete, easy-to-implement activities and resources for use in small groups, to maximise the impact on learning and open up access to the curriculum. This comprehensive and practical book provides an ideal platform for the provision of effective vocabulary development in children of all abilities. This rigorously tried and tested approach is an outstanding resource that will be an essential addition to any school and classroom and is also an important addition to the materials used by speech and language therapists.Vocabulary levels are strong predictors of later literacy skills. They predict not only how well children will develop reading comprehension, but also their phonological awareness and phonic knowledge. Vocabulary level at age five has been found to be the single best predictor of whether a child brought up in poverty will escape poverty in adult life. Without a good vocabulary, children struggle to understand what they are taught, to express how they feel, to manage social situations and resolve conflicts” – Jean Gross CBE in the Foreword to the Word Aware book. This course is suitable for Speech and Language Therapists, Class Teachers, curriculum co-ordinators, specialist teachers, Head teachers, SENCOs and Educational Psychologists. 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. Children need twelve meaningful encounters of a word before they really know it. Word Aware promotes a method called STAR, which stands for Select, Teach, Activate and Review. This process ensures the children encounter the new words many times and many different ways.

Fantastic. Range of strategies for developing vocabulary across the primary age range. Easily accessible.” We can place a therapist trained in Word Aware in your school, to set up whole class approaches, small group and 1;1 Word Aware work.

Anchor words – these are words which would be expected to be known by the majority of children of this age and which come up in everyday life. 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. 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. Word Aware allows us, using a whole school approach, to teach all pupils how to understand the relationship between words, how to understand nuances in meaning, and how to develop their understanding of, and ability to use, figurative language. Pupils will be taught how to work out and clarify the meanings of unknown words and words with more than one meaning. Word aware is equally effective for specific classes and groups or individual learners. It builds on the knowledge of the components of a word. Word Aware 2 was published in 2016. It is based on the same principals as Word Aware but it is adapted for the Early Years. It includes the fun and engaging ‘Concept Cat’ method to teach children early verbal concepts such as ‘both, corner, smooth and after’. Word Aware 2: Early Years book is available from Routledge.

Set one: Longer version for schools which are still open for selected children. These activities may also be adapted and sent home. Word Aware 3 is a comprehensive, practical and engaging resource that focuses on teaching vocabulary and word learning skills to children aged6 to 11 years who have vocabulary learning needs. It is a known fact that children with good vocabulary go on to become good readers. Orally tested vocabulary at the end of first grade is a significant prediction of reading comprehension 10 years later (Cunningham and Stanovich,1997). However, children do not always come into schools with a basic vocabulary. Although vocabulary development is crucial for school success, it has not received the attention and interest that work on identifying printed words and spellings have received (Biemiller and Slonim, 2001). The evidence is clear – we can make a difference by providing consistent attention to vocabulary growth, which in turn would improve literacy growth.Teaching vocabulary: Teaching topic related vocabulary using STAR approach. S- Select words from the curriculum Hjetland et al (2017), in their systematic review found that spoken vocabulary predicted children’s latter reading development. Vocabulary relates to reading comprehension, but impacts equally on curriculum areas that require specific word knowledge such as mathematics and science. Touch, taste and smell– take every opportunity to describe sensory experiences. Ask them to describe it to you, try to encourage them to use more detailed words than nice or bad, such as rough or sweet. 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.