Vocabulary in Context
1 of 4
The words they think they know
Vocabulary in Context gets learners to work out five or so subject words from the page, and keep them. It is for the words that trip learners up without anyone noticing: everyday words with a second, subject meaning. Learners do not circle them, because they think they know them.
For example“Tolerance? How much weight it can take.” Close, and wrong.
Pick an activity. Each takes two or three minutes.
About fifteen minutes in the lesson (a suggestion), and a plan for the next two.
Why this works in your room
A word they worked out is a word they keep.
For your learners: They use subject words with their subject meaning, not the everyday one.
For you: You can tell from one sentence whether a learner really knows a word.
Pick the words
5 to 10, before the lesson
Words that carry the topic and will come back.
Predict, then read
5 minutes
A guess for every word, even a wrong one. Highlight where each word appears.
Refine
5 minutes
Use the clues around each word to correct the guess. Send them back to the text.
Use
5 minutes
A sentence that would be wrong with any other word in it. That is the test.
Bring them back
Suggested: lesson 2 and lesson 5
Lesson 2: the five from memory. Lesson 5: each in a new sentence.
Elsewhere in Bradford ThreadWorks
Big 4Copilot: writing a simple prompt and asking for a draft, such as a summary, a starter or a quiz.Open Big 4 (opens in a new tab)
Lesson WeaverGo Read writes a text with clues around each key term, and the clues for you.Open Lesson Weaver (opens in a new tab)
WalkThrusDeliberate vocabulary development.Open WalkThrus (opens in a new tab)
The Inclusion HubSupport for learners with English as an additional language.Open The Inclusion Hub (opens in a new tab)
Prompts to paste into Copilot
Two prompts to paste into Copilot. They are our own wording, not Big 4 training. Change what is in brackets, and leave out learners' names.
The words that will mislead
Here is a text for [level] [subject] learners. [paste the text]. Find up to five words that have an everyday meaning and a different subject meaning here. For each, give the everyday meaning learners will assume, the subject meaning, and the clue in the text that shows it.
Sentences to judge
For the [subject] word [word], write three sentences a [level] learner might write: one that shows they understand it, one that uses it with no meaning shown, and one that uses the everyday meaning by mistake. Label which is which.
Vocabulary on purpose
The Education Endowment Foundation's literacy guidance asks every subject to teach its own vocabulary explicitly, not to leave it to chance, and to give learners ways to work out words they meet.
EEF, Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools (opens in a new tab)Words that need more than one meeting
Beck, McKeown and Kucan describe the words worth teaching as the ones learners will meet again and that carry the meaning of a subject. They found that words need several meetings, in different settings, before they are known well enough to use.
Beck, McKeown and Kucan, Bringing Words to Life
How sure is this?
Fairly. Explicit vocabulary teaching and repeated exposure are well supported, mostly with school-age learners. The four steps are from the college's CPD deck, Reading Across the Curriculum. The sentence test on the card is a rule of thumb, not research.
No source claimed