‘Words are everything when you have nothing else’

Words are powerful. Unfortunately, in my classroom, teaching vocabulary has always been quite meaningless rather than meaningful. This year, after attending #ResearchEd in September and listening to Alex Quigley’s incredibly informative presentation on the importance of teaching vocabulary, I came to the realisation that I wasn’t teaching my students to understand the nuanced meanings of words in an accessible way. I wasn’t encouraging them to apply their knowledge of new words accurately and effectively in different pieces of work. And I certainly wasn’t testing them and assessing whether they really knew the meanings of new words when used in a range of contexts.

Why does all of this matter for our students and their success? Well because, it is important for young people to be able to articulate themselves appropriately. It is especially vital for our ‘disadvantaged’ students who may not learn ambitious vocabulary elsewhere.

How do I know this?

I was a ‘disadvantaged’ young person. We could barely afford food and clothes, let alone the books I craved to read. Yet, words were at the heart of our family. We read and studied the Qur’an at home and at the mosque; my mum read to us in Bengali; my older siblings took me along to the library with them every Saturday, where I would sit and read, quietly enthralled by my favourite books. You see, words helped me to escape.

Throughout my childhood and teenage years, my parents reiterated the importance of reading and learning new words. My illiterate father, the eldest son of five siblings, lamented over his lack of education and explained that our circumstances may have been different if his father, a single parent, could afford to send him to school. Instead he was encouraged to go to work at the age of 14 to help his family survive.

Similarly, my mother, although literate in Bengali, was unable to complete her schooling in Bangladesh; her parents simply couldn’t afford it. The next event for my mum was marriage-the only alternative to education for a young girl at the time.

And this is why, for my parents, knowledge of words equals success.

‘Your words are everything when you have nothing else,’ my mum would say. And my mum is always right.

If I didn’t believe in the power of words, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Words didn’t just help us escape. Words helped alleviate our hardship. Words encouraged us to believe in a time beyond our present. My love of words have made me the person and teacher I am, and hope I will continue to be.

As a teacher in East London, I work with many young people who are growing up in extreme poverty and hardship. Education can be the light at the end of a very dark tunnel for these students. I know that I am blessed to have parents and siblings who have taught me the significance of words. Unfortunately, too many of our students may not have this same support system at home.

So how can we, as teachers, instil this same love of vocabulary? By teaching vocabulary explicitly and robustly? Really? Yes!

I have been trialling strategies derived from Beck et al’s ‘Bringing words to life’ and Alex Quigley’s‘Closing the Vocabulary Gap.’ These have proven successful in achieving my goal in helping students understand the power of words.

I have embedded these strategies by:

1) explicitly teaching students tier 2 vocabulary by giving them student friendly explanations and examples. Collins online dictionary is fantastic for this. I also use dual coding which helps them to recall the word and make connections.

I have been trialling this across the key stages through a range of starter activities. Students listen to the pronunciation of each word and then have to undertake a task which ensures they use the words in context. For example, in one Year 8 lesson, students were asked to compare the presentation of love in two poems using a range of words provided for them. They were given the opportunity to discuss and justify their selection with their peers. I then checked their understanding of the words and their meanings through no hands up questioning.

2) ensuring students use the words in a range of contexts across different units of work. Students need to also explore non examples so they know how not to use the word.

3) Using multiple choice quizzes to test students’ knowledge and understanding of the words. To elicit whether students truly know the words, I show them the image and they must write down the words and its different meanings. For extra points, they must use it accurately in a sentence.

These are just a few ways I have been incorporating what I have learned from the research.

What I have loved about these strategies, is the impact it has had on students’ love of the English language and their vocabulary. Understanding the different meanings of tier 2 words has also enhanced their analysis of language in literary and non-literary texts. So, using ambitious vocabulary is no longer ‘just for the top sets’ as one of my students once remarked; they are everything when one might have nothing else.

Thank you for reading. 😊

@msybibi

#Vocabulary