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

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You can’t teach a word one day and then forget about it – it needs to be a much more systematic approach. Word Aware is mostly a whole school approach, with small groups also held for children who need either pre-teaching of vocabulary, or who need to acquire word learning skills before they can benefit fully from the rest of the approach. The words chosen are ‘Goldilocks Words’ – words that are not too easy, not too difficult but just right!

They predict not only how well children will develop reading comprehension, but also their phonological awareness and phonic knowledge. Now in a fully updated second edition, this comprehensive and practical book outlines the theoretical underpinnings for vocabulary and acts as a ‘how to’ guide to developing word learning across the school and curriculum.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. Stephen Parsons is a Speech and Language Therapist, trainer and author of practical language development resources for teachers and Speech and Language Therapists (SaLTs).

In summary, Word Aware is a great resource for anyone working with Early Years children and I would highly recommend it. Motivating children to work at home for extended periods can be rather tedious, but one trick is to find games that are also educational. The Word Aware approach provides a structuredframework to promote vocabulary development in all children and has been rigorously tried and tested. With over 30 years’ experience in the field, he is 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 has a good mix of theory and practical activities which can be put into practice immediately with education staff and parents.

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). Orally tested vocabulary at the end of first grade is a significant prediction of reading comprehension 10 years later (Cunningham and Stanovich,1997). Anna Branagan, Clinical Lead Specialist Speech and Language Therapist at City and Hackney Teaching PCT. Even our Year 5 children loved this and enjoyed explaining this phrase to visitors when asked about Goldilocks words! 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.

Dictionary Definition– ask your child to choose a number based on how many pages you have in your dictionary.

Now in full colour, with photocopiable and downloadable materials, it is an outstanding resource that will be an essential addition to any school and classroom. The end product is an effective and time efficient method for developing the spoken and written vocabulary of all children. The authors emphasise the crucial role of play in language development and the book offers more than 200 games and activities to help children achieve their targets for each stage using a simple, structured layout.With over 30 years’ experience in the field, he is co-author of bestselling Speechmark resources Language for Thinking (second edition,2017), Word Aware (first edition, 2013), Word Aware 2 (2017) and Language for Behaviour and Emotions (2020). As a school we are enhancing the way we teach vocabulary by using the strategies and ideas from the ‘Word Aware’ program. This practical training will introduce you to Word Aware: a structured whole school approach to promote the vocabulary development of all children. Children will have access to dictionaries to look up the word, they will consider synonyms and will create their own sentences with the word to consolidate meaning.