Vocabulary and Understanding
Over the past four years we have developed a unique and powerful approach to supporting children to understand and use vocabulary both with confidence and understanding. This works in combination with our Talk Matters and Active Listening approaches. Through a layered approach focusing on recognising new words, understanding their meaning and using them within the context of learning and at different levels, we ensure that all our children are able to not only use new word, but crucially access the language rich and subject specific curriculum. As a result of our focus on exploring, understanding and applying words we learn secures longer term learning for our children.
Specific strategies we utilise on a daily basis include:
- Ongoing commitment to reading, oracy and speaking and listening
- Sharing new words and exploring their meaning, use and application. By doing this children not only know word meaning, but also how words work and utilise knowledge effectively
- Recognising when words are new and exploring their use and meaning within the curriculum
- Celebrating understanding of words and acknowledging when these new words are used to help children to learn more; better
