The elephant in the room: the academic side of KS2-3 transition

I began my career as a primary school teacher in Year 6. This was all going swimmingly until I couldn’t face the pressure anymore of pretending I knew how to teach football skills to children who were already rooted in county teams; forced to demonstrate how to dribble a ball or shoot a basketball hoop. It was modeling the Haka in a pinafore dress* – somewhat incorrectly – that tipped me over the edge.

*Not recommended.

After moving to teach secondary for some years, I started a new full time role (last September) working for Greenshaw Learning Trust, and am loving the challenge. With a growing number of schools  – half primary, half secondary – there’s immeasurable potential in the collaborative benefits of cross-school partnership. This might take the form of English HODs meeting together to share ideas and plans, discuss pedagogical approaches, moderate writing or share in CPD opportunities, or Primary Leads meeting to discuss frameworks for assessment in non-testing years, phonics or effective close reading strategies etc.

In recent months, I’ve noticed potential for enormous positive impact – and it’s a contentious area in the education-sphere which, honestly, baffles me.

Ten years into teaching and I still can’t quite comprehend why we, as dedicated and knowledgeable educators, don’t invest more in the academic transition between KS2 and KS3. Truthfully, the last few years have seen a real rise in pastoral improvements of this vulnerable period of change (which is fab) but, from a teaching and learning viewpoint, we appear to have seen no real gains – and this surprises me.

Over those ten years I’ve engaged in projects that have led me to visit countless schools across the country (not talking my own Trust here – though none of us would claim to be perfect yet either!) who’ve designed KS3 curriculum plans and SOWs that, while new and interesting, resemble little of the level of challenge that children are expected to achieve by the end of KS2.
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The familiar rhetoric I hear in conversations between the divorced worlds of Primary and Secondary tends to go like this:
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Primary:
KS3 teachers don’t even look at our assessments; they just roll out more baseline tests in Year 7 anyway. What’s the point of all our hard work?

Secondary:
KS2 teachers must be drilling children for Year 6 SATs. They come into my classroom and certainly don’t know much at all. KS2 tests must be flawed.

The truth is, both sides carry an element of truth but both are also riddled with errors.
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In my humble opinion, a more accurate picture looks like this:

Primary:

• a broad curriculum
• a cumulative approach to building knowledge
• a tough KS2 assessment – requires rehearsal (some say ‘drilling’)
• specialist teachers with a deep understanding of SPaG, the teaching of reading and writing, language acquisition, phonics etc.
• children benefit from teachers who know their class extremely well due to the primary classroom model – 5 days a week, same students all year, same environment, knows the 360^o family context etc.

Secondary:

• end of KS2 assessments do not assess subject knowledge of foundation subjects; further assessments needed at KS3 point of entry
• more challenging knowledge content – reduced focus on basic skills, results in poorer appearance of basic literacy/numeracy abilities
• vulnerability in transition – big fish in a small ponds become small fish in an ocean
• pedagogical approaches / calculation strategies / terminology different between primary and secondary phases
• teachers possess a huge wealth of knowledge, though may be less specialist in how to articulate extended answers and write thorough responses, which incorporate this crucial subject knowledge

The cosmic chasm between these two realms makes them incomparable.
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One hurdle lies in the fact that primaries hold accountability for their students right until their departure at age 11 or 12, but nothing beyond. Results are entirely dependent on the level of progress they make in that school. Secondaries, however, are dependent on KS2 results to set the bar for expected progress at KS3 and 4.
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Without much awareness from secondary teachers as to what is required by the end of Key Stage 2, no matter how much energy we’ve given to writing that SOW for Year 7, we’re unintentionally doing a disservice to our students who arrive, keen, raring to learn and extremely capable.
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In September 2015, Ofsted published a white paper, ‘Key Stage 3: the wasted years?’ which sought to highlight the depression in performance from KS2 to KS3.

Key findings from this report, among others, lists these three points:

1. Key Stage 3 is not a high priority for many secondary school leaders in timetabling, assessment and monitoring of pupils’ progress. 85% of senior leaders interviewed said that they staff Key Stages 4 and 5 before Key Stage 3. Key Stage 3 is given lower priority, where classes are more often split between more than one teacher or where pupils are taught by non-specialists.
2. Leaders prioritise the pastoral over the academic needs of pupils during transition from primary school. While this affects all pupils, it can have a particularly detrimental effect on the progress and engagement of the most able.
3. Many secondary schools do not build sufficiently on pupils’ prior learning. Many of the senior leaders interviewed said that they do not do this well enough and accepted that some pupils would repeat some of what they had done in Key Stage 2. Pupil responses indicate that repeating work is more of an issue in mathematics and English than in the foundation subjects.

Questions to consider:

1. Have you got a robust system in place that requires students to bring in samples of their best work on induction days – to record and share with teachers and tutors in advance of September?
2. Are you aware of the expectations at KS2 in reading (pg6), writing (pg8), and SPaG?
3. Have you spent time exploring the assessments students sit at the end of Year 6 in reading and SPaG?
4. Are your expectations at KS3 offering natural progression of challenge from this point onwards, or are you inadvertently creating a culture that allows students to plateau through KS3?
5. Do your Year 7 and 8 SOWs demonstrate high academic expectations, and does the teaching across your department reflect these?
6. Have you visited a local primary school to see teaching and learning in action?
7. Have you met KS2 Leads within your own academy trust/local area/feeder schools to hold professional conversations about what ‘challenge’ looks like in Year 6 and how you might be able to extend this the other side of the transition? 

 

Top 6 FAQ: Synthetic Phonics

1. What is it?
   Synthetic phonics is an approach to teaching reading which seeks to consolidate letter sounds first, before blending these sounds together to achieve full pronunciation of whole words.
   Examples include:
   s (as in ‘sun’)
   mm (as in ‘comma’)
   ai (as in ‘brain’)
   rh (as in ‘rhyme’)
   dge (as in ‘bridge’)
   eigh (as in ‘weigh’)
   ough (as in ‘dough’)
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2. What are the potential benefits?
   a) This method demands explicit, discrete teaching of each individual sound within the English alphabetic code; not just the 26 letters, but the 45(ish) sounds – (additions include extras such as: oi, or, er) and 150+ spellings (e.g. r, rr, rh, wr). Synthetic Phonics provides a comprehensive toolkit for readers of all abilities, to be able to decode unfamiliar words rather than trying to teach endless individual words or to pick up clues around the word, which can often lead to multiple errors or guessing attempts.
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   b) EAL students often show rapid  improvement through this approach, and therefore unlock access to the rest of the curriculum. Since EAL is an entirely different ballgame to SEN, it’s no surprise that these pupils make obvious gains very quickly once they’ve grasped the core patterns of the English language.
   c) In comparison to its shifty cousin, ‘analytic phonics’, this approach does not rely on a learner being able to understand the context of the sentence it resides in, in order to decode (read) the word itself.
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3. What are the potential drawbacks?
   a) Some fail to acknowledge the necessary bridge between teaching the sounds and reading fluently. Unless you commit to modelling how to blend sounds within a word, learners will take much longer to read with increased fluency. Demonstrating how to blend sounds, e.g. in ‘b-r-i-dge’ and ‘ch-oi-ce’, will develop stronger readers.
   b) Our beautifully rich English language is bittersweet. We’ve conquered, stolen and borrowed so many words from so many places, cultures and eras that our alphabetic code is now a picture of perfectly ordered chaos.
   What this means in reality is that spelling feels impossibly difficult for weaker readers. While synthetic phonics has done wonders for reading in KS1&2, unless teachers are persisting to teach spellings explicitly and frequently, learners will employ their decoding knowledge to attempt encoding (spelling) words. It feels comfortable to the novice writer To do so but, until they’ve had repeated exposure to high frequency words and phrases such as the example in the image below, and have been taught root patterns of specific sounds*, those wonderful phonic skills that enable one to read doesn’t always directly translate to spelling.

   

   My niece’s phonetically plausible attempt at a story opener…

   *See root spelling video of  the word ‘one’ here.
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4. What about older students who’ve not succeeded with phonics previously?
   I view this from a pair of rather binary binoculars. If synthetic phonics works for so many in so many places and with so many contributing factors to their learning journey, I can’t subscribe to the notion that this method would work with the majority but not the remaining few. I’ve taught synthetic phonics for a number of years to students with a wealth of different learning needs, and not once has this approach been unsuitable. Considering what we know about the learning process, (e.g. that VAK is RIP) it seems counter intuitive to suggest that some suit this method and others don’t. The pace and dynamics of the group may change, but the key here is to ensure that older students are included in the conversation, with transparency around why this is not a ‘baby-ish’ concept and how vital it is for learning and life. Greg Ashman’s post, ‘Phonics is like a vaccine‘ articulates this point brilliantly.
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5. What about comprehension?
   This aspect of the eternal phonics debate is widely and wildly misunderstood. Skeptics, haters and change-dodgers use this as an excuse to abandon synthetic phonics. In my experience, the practice of phonics does not directly improve understanding, except that it absolutely does.
   It’s simple:
   1. Learn sounds
   2. Decode whole words
   3. Increase fluency to read whole sentences, passages, pages, chapters, books…etc.
   4. Greater exposure to text – repeated exposure to new vocabulary
   5. Increased comprehension.              For me, this area is a non-argument. A parallel claim would be to argue that learning to walk does not improve dancing. Until you’ve put one foot in front of the other on repeated occasions in a number of different settings and on a number of different surfaces, moving at different speeds, there’s no way you’d be able to seduce with a steamy rumba or master the Macarena.
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6. How is it embedded?
   Just as you wouldn’t take dancing lessons without a regular chance to dance, or attend football training sessions without frequent opportunities to play in a match, synthetic phonics won’t get you very far unless you have plenty of opportunities to read. And it’s both the interest level and the quality of text that really matters. Doug Lemov’s work on choosing rich texts full of challenge is comparable to none – see here. Early readers (at whatever age) will benefit from easily decodable books, moving onto simple chapter books and then increasing the difficulty level beyond that. Investing in the daily habit of reading will maximise the impact of synthetic phonics. Class readers, group reading sessions, parental engagement in reading at home and independent reading opportunities are crucial in cultivating enthusiastic readers.
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Gohtt Spelling Dyphickalteaz?

“Phoney Phonetics” by Vivian Buchan, NEA Journal 1966/67, USA

One reason why I cannot spell, Although I learned the rules quite well Is that some words like coup and through Sound just like threw and flue and Who; When oo is never spelled the same, The duice becomes a guessing game; And then I ponder over though, Is it spelled so, or throw, or beau, And bough is never bow, it’s bow, I mean the bow that sounds like plow, And not the bow that sounds like row – The row that is pronounced like roe. I wonder, too, why rough and tough, That sound the same as gruff and muff, Are spelled like bough and though, for they Are both pronounced a different way. And why can’t I spell trough and cough The same as I do scoff and golf?

Why isn’t drought spelled just like route, or doubt or pout or sauerkraut? When words all sound so much the same To change the spelling seems a shame. There is no sense – see sound like cents – in making such a difference Between the sight and sound of words; Each spelling rule that undergirds The way a word should look will fail And often prove to no avail Because exceptions will negate The truth of what the rule may state; So though I try, I still despair And moan and mutter “It’s not fair That I’m held up to ridicule And made to look like such a fool When it’s the spelling that’s at fault. Let’s call this nonsense to a halt.”

Published in Spelling Progress Bulletin Spring 1966 pdf, p6

 

“Say what you see!” Is Phonics Really Necessary?

For safety’s sake, I’m going on the assumption that there may be some readers arriving at this post who would appreciate a simple definition of some of the key terminology used around this topic. I’ve listed these in an A4 document which you can download by clicking here: Glossary of Phonics Terms JM.

If you don’t need it, skip it. Any terms in the post that are in bold are listed in the glossary.

The legendary debate regarding the best approach to teaching reading has been around for as long as I can remember. It has particularly been warming up over the past few years, however, not least because of its heightened publicity in the media around the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check. (I’ll briefly touch on this to conclude, though pedagogy is my primary focus here.) There are a number of different camps that plausibly offer their own valuable ‘fuel’ to keep the metaphorical ‘phonics-or-no-phonics’ fire aflame though, for me, a couple of these camps have their tent pegs more firmly hammered into the ground than others.

 

In this post, while I’d like to think I have the burning magical powers to unite all parties involved, successfully luring both phonic-lovers and phonic-haters to join hands and chant ‘Kumbaya’ (or ‘mm’, ‘igh’, ‘ah’ if you like), beneath a starlit sky through the irresistible offer of a simple but decadent s’more (Google it – you’ll want one, and then ‘s’more’…), leading all to unanimously accept that my way of thinking is the only way, it won’t happen. Call me a pessimist (or preferably, a realist) but there are some firm roots beneath the feet of those who are used to their own familiar way of teaching reading to take a risk just yet.

 

Until then, I’d like to make the case that synthetic phonics is invaluable in teaching students how to read and is unparalleled in its ability to teach the various explicit phonemes (heard sounds) and graphemes (spellings) within the English language. While I stand firm to this, I’d also assert that this single method, while incredibly powerful, is not sufficient on its own without its partners in crime analytic phonics and embedded phonics, though am confident they should only come into play as a means to apply the synthetic phonic knowledge learned.

Historically, a number of different approaches have been trialled in the teaching of reading, including the alphabetic code where students learn the sounds of each letter of the alphabet in order, learning the capital and lowercase symbols at the same time as the sounds. Students would first learn letter names, subsequently being taught their sounds. This, interestingly, was the method used in schools at the time when I was taught to read so, while it must have worked for me, I’m not sure it is the best-fit model across the majority of students in this country. Other approaches include the ‘look and say’ method and the ‘whole word’ technique, both of which encourage the repetition of a single word until it is learnt.

In recent years, the government has pushed for a ‘phonics-only’ approach, which teaches children to decode words through knowing the make up of individual sounds, rather than recognising the whole word at once (the “Say What You See” method, if you like). This method of synthetic phonics relies on words being broken up into the smallest units of sound (phonemes). So, for example, in the word ‘church’, there are 6 letters but only 3 phonemes: ch / ur / ch and, in ‘dough’, 5 letters but 2 phonemes d / ough.

 

There are, undoubtedly, many benefits to teaching reading using the phonic principle. If a student has mastered a sound correctly, e.g. knowing that the combination of ‘p’ and ‘h’ will make a ‘f’ sound, the scope for using this knowledge is mammoth. Phonics is invaluable. The application opportunities of this approach are great, with students being able to use this newfound awareness to break down a wide range of both familiar and unfamiliar words. Once learnt and embedded, the 44 phonemes (sounds) created by our 26 letters of the English alphabet, offer readers the freedom to decode hundreds and thousands of words that follow the same pattern.

Tim Shanahan, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Education at University of Illinois, Chicago has written a short series of four articles on Literacy, entitled ‘Teaching My Daughters to Read’. In his third post, which focuses on phonics, Shanahan suggests that:

‘Memorizing some words is always part of beginning reading, but reading is more than memorizing words.

Phonics both reduces students’ reliance on word memorization and makes such memorization easier. It accomplishes the former, by allowing students to sound out words that are yet unknown. Phonics allows the young reader to approximate the pronunciation of a word from nothing but the letters on the page, a liberating tool.

But phonics instruction also sets students off on trying to figure out and use the spelling patterns in text. Those patterns are not usually used to “sound out” words in any obvious way (except initially), but learning them does seem to increase how quickly and easily students come to “remember” words. Initially, children struggle to remember words, but as they learn the spelling patterns and sound-symbol relations the words get stickier—they seem to stay in memory with much less work.’

 

In line with my comments above, Shanahan agrees that, while memorising words is one technique that would eventually transfer knowledge into the long-term memory, it is not the most thorough approach to teaching reading or the most efficient. In the same way that I argue that teaching root words and their meanings is the best way forward for teaching vocabulary in a recent blog post (see here), I also believe synthetic phonics can have an incredibly powerful impact on students’ ability in the decoding and spelling of words. By learning the 44 phonemes of the English language and the various ways to spell them (which reaches up to the heights of over 150 variations!), we are giving students a ‘tool’ to be able to tackle any word they might encounter. To my mind, when I consider the students I currently work with in KSs 3 & 4, this approach has resulted in a reduced anxiety for so many as, like any individual approaching a job they are uncertain about, if they are well-equipped to complete the task, they can tackle the job feeling adequately prepared. The weaker readers I work with are presented with multiple opportunities to rehearse blending the isolated sounds they have already been taught. It seems to be this, rather than memorising individual words, that gives them far greater confidence in reading as, through this approach, they find themselves armed with the skill set to be able to decode both familiar and unfamiliar words.

 

Shanahan’s full article can be found here:
http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2014/07/teaching-my-daughters-to-read-part-iii.html

If there is one thing that remains certain while the debate continues, it is vital that whatever method is being used to teach reading must be regular, consistent, and systematic in its approach. I feel a little uneasy when I think there may be schools delivering phonics in a way that isn’t supporting memory retention, e.g. not recognising the benefits of repetition and offering frequent opportunities for application. I would even go so far as to say that, I suspect for those schools where phonics has not had a significantly improved impact on student learning, additional obstacles could include the consistency of delivery perhaps not being as regular as required, or there may be an underlying lack of confidence around the teaching of phonics, possibly due to staff members not being supported with adequate training. I say this only because I have seen the immensely positive effect that synthetic phonics has had on students across KS1, 2 (ranging from the very weak to the very able), and weaker readers at KS3 & 4. While wholly aware that every student brings a different attitude and context to the learning environment, as a pedagogical approach to teaching reading I cannot see why synthetic phonics would not work for the majority of our students.

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A bold claim, I realise.

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In December last year, the National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE) published a paper looking into the view on phonics of teachers within the classroom. The report, ‘Phonics instruction and early reading: professional views from the classroom’, offers a critical analysis of current approaches to the teaching of reading, making use of government documents and professional literature, drawing on the views of respondents to the 2013 NATE survey on phonics instruction and early reading. In its discussion, it states:

“No respondent to the survey regards phonics instruction in early years education as unnecessary, and there is significant support for the view that phonics should be the prime focus of teaching beginning readers. Several people agree with the assertion of the DfE evidence paper (DfE 2011a) that the ability to decode grapheme/phoneme correspondences is the first requirement for success in reading. Some respondents who work with children with special learning difficulties believe that early phonic instruction is particularly important for the progress of such children. A large majority of both infant and junior teachers report positive effects on their pupils’ writing and spelling, and about a third of each group report positive effects on pupils’ comprehension and higher reading skills.”

Click here for the full paper.

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The findings of the survey, completed by educationalists whose business it is to teach students how to read, clearly support the notion that synthetic phonics should be the leading approach employed within the classroom. The collossal benefits to outweight the drawbacks.

Those who oppose synthetic phonics assert that this method alone is not enough to enable a student to read. For example, if looking at the word ‘row’, one would not be able to tell whether they should read it as in the sentence ‘I am sitting in row 4’ or ‘There were two people on the bus having a row’. Similarly, with the sound ‘ough’, there are about nine variations in total…

 

Critics of synthetic phonics suggest that an additional element of whole sentence context is essential in teaching pupils how to read, in order to overcome issues around fluency and understanding. The NATE report goes on to say,

“But the view of more than two-thirds of respondents is that, while phonic decoding is an important part of learning to read, other strategies are also vital. More than a quarter of respondents emphasise the importance of reading for meaning, and there is much concern that an overemphasis on phonics leads to an unbalanced reading curriculum in which other reading skills such as prediction and contextual information are not taken into account.”

To me, synthetic phonics is the most foolproof approach and the best-fit model for the majority of students, so long as staff are given sufficient training and sessions take place regularly and effectively. However, perhaps anticlimactically, I agree with the findings of the survey outlined above, arguing that the grapheme-phoneme correspondence alone is not enough to teach the art of reading. Opportunities for application are a must, including having a range of books accessible to students that still generate a love of reading and maintain an interest in the exploration of our diverse language. Scaffolding student learning is important of course, especially in the very early stages, but I see this freedom to read books of interest alongside the teaching of phonics as a necessary chance to apply knowledge to real-life situations. A text that provides the reader with both a challenge but also the chance to achieve mini successes too sounds like a healthy balance to me.

ONE WORD OF WARNING: DON’T JUDGE A STUDENT BY ITS COVER.

A strong ability in decoding and fluency does not necessarily equate good comprehension too.

These more refined skills still need to be taught and rehearsed with students. There is often a level of inference and deduction that is written into the most simplest of story books and students need to begin to learn how to identify the different layers of a text in all its glory. However, this should come secondary to the explicit teaching of the isolated sounds. At least from this point, students then possess the necessary foundation on which to develop more advanced tools when looking at a text.

It is a fair point to raise that in recent years, since the Government’s push for phonics in KS1, we have seen growing numbers of students entering KS3, identified through our thorough baseline testing who, while they may be able to decode words accurately, they fail to grasp the full meaning of what they are reading. This is why I believe that the whole phonic picture – the synthetic (isolated sounds) and the analytical (teaching sounds within context) and, indeed, the opportunities for application, need to be intertwined when teaching reading to our students.

Unsure of which has been going on longer
– the phonics debate or this blog post –
I’ll end here
…nearly.

I have one concluding comment that I’m conscious may ignite the rousing flame once again over the ‘Should the Y1 phonics screening check be scrapped?’ debate, but my simple answer is:

“No.”

Following the open letter that was addressed to Nicky Morgan, requesting for the Phonics Screening Check to remain (see links below), I have researched heavily around the test. On reading the opposing views which highlight concerns around teachers teaching to the test, a heightened student anxiety, the use of nonsense words, undetected comprehension issues etc. I would still support the screening check. Having seen students enter KS3 unable to read (and even some in the first year of my role reaching Year 11) and seeming so demoralised that they cannot sufficiently decode even the most common of words independently, I’m convinced that any early assessments that provide an indication of how students are performing in comparison to their peers can only be a good thing. Many of the students I talk about here are incredibly bright students, held back throughout their education only by their inability to read and spell, not having been identified earlier.

Looking at the guidance sent out to schools, administrators are directed to ensure that students do not see their ‘screening’ as a test in any way (though I recognise is difficult when you have multiples of 30 children to listen to). While there will always be inevitable drawbacks to a national test, I would propose that for this purpose, a standardised measure might be the best route forward for identifying students for concern. However, it will only have a positive impact if schools actually make use of the information, informing their future teaching based on the results of the screening check. I would also claim, in line with comments made previously in this post, that an assessment which measures not only decoding but comprehension too would be the best way to identify a weakness in reading. This, I believe, would allow us a greater chance to catch those students who tend to fall through the net when they are younger, thus reducing the number of students who have to battle through their education years with underlying difficulties around reading and comprehension, liberating those who possess all the other learning skills to succeed.

 

If you’re interested and want to know more, here are some links you might like to explore:

Open letter to Nicky Morgan:

http://news.tes.co.uk/b/opinion/2014/07/30/open-letter-to-nicky-morgan-39-why-the-year-1-phonics-check-must-stay-39.aspx

News articles:
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/16/phonics-children-education-research

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10901099/Children-taught-to-read-using-phonics-two-years-ahead-by-age-seven.html

NATE review:
http://www.nate.org.uk/cmsfiles/papers/Phonics_and_early_reading.pdf

DfE Phonics Screening Check Information:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/phonics

Part 1: ROOT PLANNER

This is the first of a two-part post.

‘Part 1: ROOT PLANNER’ outlines the ideology behind the new vocabulary stream I’ve designed in connection with the launch of our new English Curriculum.

‘Part 2: ROOT MAP’ will offer a more detailed sketch of the vocabulary map we will be working from, exploring ways to engage students with the importance of language and the art of how to use it.

1. FIND THE KEY

It took me four attempts to pass my driving test. I’d like to say it was the fault of the innocent-looking woman waiting at the zebra crossing, for showing no obvious signs she was about to step into the road as I zoomed past (at quite an impressive speed). Or I could blame that thoughtless trio of examiners I had for endeavouring to engage me in polite conversation during the journey, despite it being glaringly apparent I had a lot going on. But really, I knew.

 

It was only after the third walk of shame up the garden path back to my parents’ house where I was living at the time that I consciously took a moment to gather my thoughts and reflect. I realised where I’d been going wrong. It was not, in fact, those dreaded manoeuvres that were my downfall after all, but more my hazard perception in built up areas. If I’d had the sense to identify my specific weaknesses, noticing a pattern earlier on rather than seeing each test as just another ghastly event independent from the others, I’m sure I’d have cracked the code sooner.

How is this relevant?

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Well, apart from offering you a rare opportunity to indulge in a moment of healthy schadenfreude, for me, the development of literacy is a bit like learning to drive. The challenges embedded within complex processes such as being able to recognise written letter combinations (graphemes) and being able to decode them, spell spoken sounds (phonemes) accurately – within both familiar and unfamilar vocabulary – and grasp the full meaning of a rich text at its various different layers can sometimes be a little overwhelming.

 

Gear in neutral, check. Start the engine, check. L foot on the clutch, check.
Gear into 1st, check. Position mirrors, check. Control the wheel, check.
R foot gently on the gas, check. Remove handbrake, check.
Final blindspot check. Turn the wheel, check.
L foot off the clutch, check.

 

Having felt quite secure in my knowledge of the English alphabetic code growing up, I never considered the possibility that I’d only been exposed to a minute proportion of the key principles underpinning our language. I could read, write and spell with ease but it was really not until I began teaching reading and vocabulary acquisition myself (primarily to younger students, then older ones with reading difficulties) that I became fully aware of our diverse and creative language.

In Art, we take time to appreciate intricate patterns. As Mathematicians, we make it our business to hunt for them. In Science, we continually look for patterns in results, consequently making crucial predictions based on these. So why on earth do we not naturally think to do this with our language – the single most important communication tool we rely on day in, day out?

—

A very real but healthy challenge secondary schools must acknowledge is the sheer scale of subject content covered across the different departments. Unlike primary education where a closer environment lends itself to more regular teacher collaboration, working in isolated departments is possibly one of our biggest obstacles in guaranteeing a holistic approach to learning. And yet, on the flipside, this very hurdle could be our greatest friend. Language spans across all curriculum subjects and, without wishing to be melodramatic, across every other aspect of life yet we fail to use it in its magnificent entirety. This ‘tool’ contains hundreds of patterns just waiting to be identified in order to help make our acquisition of language easier, be that in reading it, spelling it or understanding it.

—

 2. KNOW YOUR ROOT 

—
The oxford dictionaries website claims,

“…there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which  perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.”

Excellent. As a proud and ‘outed’ logophile, I rejoice in the knowledge of this. If the above estimate is true, that’s somewhere between 250,000-750,000 words floating around for us to explore. Wonderful. So how do we propose to teach them all?

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Simply put, we don’t. That would be ridiculous.

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I am confident, however, that we’re missing a trick (where ‘a trick’ means ‘a simply great way to teach vocabulary’). What we are in a position to do is employ strategies that offer the most time-effective, cognitively engaging methods to ensure words are taught and embedded in the long-term memory, drawing on research-based assessment methods to consolidate learning.

I am without doubt that language needs to be taught explicitly. While it is obviously pleasing to see students reading texts for their own enjoyment and, usually as a result they broaden their knowledge of vocabulary, this is not the only way to encourage language aquisition. It’s not the only way and it’s not the best way, either.

In his excellent book, ‘The Secret of Literacy’ (2014), David Didau suggests that, while ‘wide reading’ is fine, we are mistaken to believe that this is the best way to develop vocabulary. He explains,

“Written language is a far less effective medium for building vocabulary than spoken language.
Typically, pupils only learn between five and fifteen of every 100 new words encountered in
written texts.” (p173)

While engaging and helpful in the process, this kind of exposure to new words is never going to move mountains. Didau goes on to cite the great English teacher and education blogger, Joe Kirby, who suggests that we should be teaching root words as our default rather than isolated words divorced from others possessing the same root. “In that way, instead of just teaching one word, we’re potentially teaching hundreds of words.” (p174)

I suppose, in likening this aspect of literacy to maths, it would be comparable to teaching every single number independent from all the others, rather than teaching the decimal principle which relies on the use of hundreds, tens and units etc.

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Language has a clear structure and as educators it is our responsibility to scaffold students’ learning by ensuring we provide the necessary foundation blocks for them to be able to continue building on this independently.

An understanding of what root words, prefixes and suffixes are is the first step to solid language development, in my opinion. Following that, a consistent, direct teaching which targets the most common roots in our language will undoubtedly give students greater freedom to explore vocabulary.

Take the root word ‘chron’. ‘Chron’ means ‘time’.

During one of my regular Sound Training sessions (a literacy programme we use and rate highly – designed to support both reading accuracy and knowledge of root words to aid learning), I was asked:

“Miss, so if ‘chron’ means time, why does my Dad say he gets ‘chronic’ back pain?”

I couldn’t answer this with any conviction as, until this moment of realisation, had always misunderstood the term to mean ‘severe’. On researching it’s etymology with the group of Year 9 students we learnt it actually means ‘continuing for a long time’.

I’ve also welcomed conversations with questions like this…

“Miss, so if ‘photosynthesis’ means […] does that mean ‘sis’ means
‘the process of’ like ‘tion’ does?”

To be able to explore such an intricately-woven tapestry like the English language, investigating roots and their meanings with students who clearly show an interest is the kind of precious learning time I relish.

I really do believe there are huge merits to teaching vocabulary in this way and, working in partnership with a great colleague of mine, Phil Stock, plan to pilot this approach from September with the launch of the new English Curriculum. (See his post on the broader new KS3 English curriculum here.) 

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Not only do root words have invaluable benefits on students’ comprehension of unfamiliar vocabulary, they also significantly aid spelling. Once the meaning and spelling of a single root has been learnt, by utilising the other essential ‘tools’ taught alongside roots (such as: counting the number of syllables in a word, learning both common and akward graphemes, having an awareness of confusing homophones & homographs etc.), it is anticipated that students will be able to spell with far greater confidence.

WREWTS MEEN VARY LITUL UNLESC YEW CANNES WREED AN RITE

I have no desire on the final leg of this marathon blog post to steer us in another direction but it would be ludicrous not to briefly mention another equally important aspect of literacy – the ability to decode isolated sounds (phonemes) and spell them accurately (graphemes). Within the vocabulary stream of our new English curriculum model, we intend to build in tried and tested methodologies to teach spelling and decoding in the mainstream classroom, alongside the comprehension aspect of roots.

EXAMPLE 1:

phoneme = e.g. the sound you hear when you say ‘f’
graphemes = the written representations of the sound ‘f’ = fun, phone, cough, puff

EXAMPLE 2:

grapheme = e.g. the written representation of the sound ‘ch’
phonemes = the different sounds you hear in the words: chips, chef, chorus

As a result of including this element in the model*, it is expected that students will benefit from having a greater handle on vocabulary and an increased confidence to use words more freely.

*Part 2 of this post will outline the model in greater detail.

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(As an aside: I should say here that, while we are very eager to launch this model in September, we have no intention to reduce our intervention support for students who face barriers to reading. There will inevitably always be a need for support at Wave 1 (in class), Wave 2 (group support) and Wave 3 (1:1 tuition) for students who require further alternative support to help close the gap between them and their peers. For these students, we will continue to use the synthetic phonics-based programmes we currently use, such as: Read, Write Inc. Fresh start and Toe by Toe etc. We also intend to deliver Sound Training – a phonics and roots-based literacy programme – with each student in our new Year 7 cohort.)

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3. PREPARE FOR OBSTACLES 

One reason why this approach to teaching vocabulary may not have been so ardently pursued before could be due to the cocktail of possible misconceptions that lie within the model.

Take these words, for example:

Here, we have two very different words, though their beginnings are identical. It is quite common for students to mix up the roots ‘bi’ and ‘bio’, since it is not always clear to see where one morpheme (root) ends in a word and the next begins. The best way to tackle this is to ensure students are made fully aware, right from the onset, that there are likely to be confusions like this within some words. It is at the point of uncertainty as in the example shown above, that we would then use the learners’ knowledge of roots in combination with their understanding of the word in context to make an educated guess around its meaning. Once the context has been established, it is then possible to dissect the constructed word into what would simply revert back to its original collection of root meanings.

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Other anticipated confusions include…

a) there can be more than one meaning for a root 

b) there can be more than one root for a meaning

c) there can be words without any helpful clues

However, by disclosing these potential misconceptions with students at the beginning of the year, we hope to significantly reduce the potential margin of error surrounding what is, largely, a reliable and precious resource.

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 4. BROADEN YOUR HORIZONS 

(Click on the image above to appreciate its comedic value.)
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It is a small but worthwhile point to make that, when expecting students to use lexical jewels in their writing, we need to be mindful that some will have had greater opportunities and life experiences than others, giving some an inevitable advantage over their peers. Similarly, if students are not choosing to read challenging texts for pleasure at school or at home, they are inhibiting their chances of language development, thus reducing the likelihood that they will ever recreate the extravagant use of vocabulary we see in challenging texts within in their own writing. While this point may be partly out of our hands – unable to influence some home life factors contributing to this – we may be able to support students both within and around the classroom environment by helping them select ability-appropriate books (with a welcome level of demand) that they will enjoy.

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5. TEST YOUR THEORY

 

As previously mentioned, Part 2 of this post will outline in greater detail the systematic approach we will adopt to teaching vocabulary from September 2014. Included in this post, there will be an outline of our proposed method of assessment, discussing the frequency of these and suggesting why formative assessments throughout the year are just as important as the direct teaching. Each term, students will have the opportunity to demonstrate their level of understanding through the use of short, regular, purposeful tests that will be used not only to assess understanding but to embed knowledge too.

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6. GET YOUR LICENCE… and GO!

While I love words and am excited to drive this stream forward, I’m not naïve enough to think that through this approach, all teachers and students will magically become fellow logophiles too. What I do hope, however, is that through employing the best evidence-based teaching methods that support memory retention in the long-term, students will be able to look at language in a refreshed way, seizing opportunities to explore language deeply.

The vision is not only for students to benefit from what will hopefully be an improved confidence in reading, spelling and selecting vocabulary for their writing, but for them to develop a genuine enthusiasm for words too, recognising the incredible impact language can have across all areas of learning and life.

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Part 2: ROOT MAP to follow soon…