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Session 1: Introduction to Explicit Vocabulary Teaching.

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Session 1: Introduction to Explicit Vocabulary Teaching.

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Vocabulary experts agree that adequate reading comprehension depends on a person already knowing between 90 and 95 per cent of the words in a text (Hirsch, 2003).

Research has shown that children can learn vocabulary through incidental learning during shared reading, but effects are modest.

Explicit teaching needs to be planned with the intentional delivery of specific vocabulary in order for learners to take on the meaning of new words.

Students learn more words, and more about those words, when teaching is explicit.

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Session 8: Revisiting Explicit Vocabulary Teaching & using the Reconnect to embed vocabulary.

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Session 8: Revisiting Explicit Vocabulary Teaching & using the Reconnect to embed vocabulary.

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In the demonstration video today, you can watch Ria Leggatt working through Explicit Vocabulary Teaching (Reconnect + vocab slides).

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Session 3: Activating Prior Knowledge and Predicting. 

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Session 3: Activating Prior Knowledge and Predicting. 

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Making predictions is a strategy in which readers use information from a text (including titles & headings) and their prior knowledge, or existing schema, to anticipate what they are about to read. A reader involved in making predictions is focused on the text at hand, constantly thinking ahead and also refining, revising, and verifying their predictions.

Making predictions before reading comes very naturally to skilled readers, but for struggling readers, this skill can be just the opposite. Therefore, it is important that teachers model making predictions and continually provide ways for students to practice this reading comprehension strategy.

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Tom Sherrington on Deliberate vocabulary development.

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Vocabulary slide example.

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Session 7: Revisiting pre-reading and during reading strategies (activating prior knowledge, prediction and questioning), with new approaches to supporting students reading aloud.

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Session 7: Revisiting pre-reading and during reading strategies (activating prior knowledge, prediction and questioning), with new approaches to supporting students reading aloud.

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In the first demonstration video, you can watch John Clayton work through pre-reading (activating prior knowledge and prediction) and during reading strategies (questioning to check understanding). In addition, John is also demonstrating a strategy for supporting students with reading aloud.

In the second demonstration, you can watch John model a whole class choral or echo reading strategy.

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Coxhead's Academic Word List.

In 2000, Coxhead published the findings from her research into the most frequent and widely-used words used in core academic vocabulary. Coxhead’s research is based on a corpus of 400 written academic texts, equalling about 3.5. million words in total. The texts range across 28 different subject areas and four disciplines: Arts, commerce, law and science. Included on the list are only the words that appeared at least 100 times in the corpus as a whole and at least ten times in each of the four disciplines. There are 570 words overall, for example analysis, estimate indicate and variable. Whilst there are a multitude of worthwhile Tier 2 words outside of the academic word list, this can be a useful starting point.

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Test what you've learned

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Session 2: Embedding Vocabulary using the Reconnect.

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Session 2: Embedding Vocabulary using the Reconnect.

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One of the valid criticisms of  Explicit Vocabulary Teaching, is that merely being exposed to a new word at the beginning of the lesson (or even a well-meaning word list, knowledge organiser or word wall display) does not equate to word acquisition.

Words gain meaning from context, so we need to use strategies to help students retain the meanings of new words across multiple contexts (developing the schema).

Remembering that 'overlearning' is one of the best strategies for changing the long-term memory, we can use our reconnect to keep new vocabulary alive for the students e.g. gap fills; multiple choice; dual coding; examples vs. non-examples, labeling of diagrams or using new words in sentence work.

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Commentary introduction to Demonstration 1.

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Demonstration Video 1

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Commentary introduction to Demonstration 2.

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Demonstration Video 2

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Alex Quigley "We Did Vocabulary Last Year"

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We Did Vocabulary Last Year: Alex Quigley (edited)

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Reconnect slide examples.

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Metacognition and reading

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Questioning & Clarifying During Reading Video 1 

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Session 4: Questioning, Clarifying and Summarising. 

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Session 4: Questioning, Clarifying and Summarising. 

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Once prior knowledge has been activated, predictions have been made and a reading goal has been established, it is time to start reading the text. However, in a teacher- led whole class reading session, care must be taken to ensure that full reading comprehension is taking place. This means stopping during reading to clarify challenging vocabulary (largely pre-taught), and to ask questions that both check understanding and develop inferences. After an appropriate 'chunk' of the text has been read, it is also helpful to support the students in summarising the most salient points of what they have read with topic sentences, subheadings and bullet points.

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Effective questions during reading

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5 Step approach to reading comprehension (hand graphic)

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5 Step Approach To Reading Comprehension

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Summarising after reading

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In the demonstration video today,  you can watch Josh Andain working through Explicit Vocabulary Teaching (Reconnect+ vocab slides) and the 5 Step Approach to Reading:
1. Activating prior knowledge
2. Making predictions
3. Asking questions to check understanding
4. Asking questions to develop inferences and connections
5. Summarising

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Embedding vocabulary and explicit vocabulary teaching:

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Embedding vocabulary and explicit vocabulary teaching:

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Activating prior knowledge and making predictions.

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In the demonstration video today,  you can watch James Gardiner working through Explicit Vocabulary Teaching (Reconnect+ vocab slides) and the 5 Step Approach to Reading.

Today's demonstration has been divided into 4 sections, with 4 short commentary videos to support.

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5 Step Approach To Reading Comprehension

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Asking questions to check understanding and asking questions to develop inferences and connections.

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Summarising.

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Alex Quigley, "Does Reading Really Matter in Maths"

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Every teacher recognises that every subject is mediated by reading skill, but it matters in some more than others, right? Does it really matter that much in maths?

When I speak to teachers, or those school leaders responsible for aspects of literacy whole school, the refrain they often relate is that reading simply doesn't matter so much in maths. Perhaps maths teachers - beleaguered by past experiences of being led down the path of generic reading and writing approaches - are simply defending their hard-won teaching ground?

Reading does matter to maths, of course, but how exactly?

Reading skill and mathematical vocabulary

Everyone recognises the unique language of mathematics that is separate to the everyday talk of pupils.

Maths is clothed by polysemous vocabulary (words that have multiple meanings) that can foster ambiguity and unhelpful misconceptions. Just a few include:

Not only that, some maths words are homophones (words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spellings) with more common words e.g. pi and pie, and sign.

Even simple mathematical operations, like subtraction, is described in lots of ways in typical talk, such as ' subtract', ' minus' or ' take away'. Then you add in words like ' decrease', ' reduce' and ' take off '. Teachers are constantly translating the language of maths - not unlike a German or French teacher.

Researcher, Andrew Rothery, helpfully defined three categories of mathematical vocabulary:

1. Words which are specific to mathematics and not usually encountered in everyday language (e.g. hypotenuse, coefficient).
2. Words which occur in mathematics and ordinary English, but involve different meanings in these two contexts (e.g. difference, volume).
3. Words which have the same or roughly the same meaning in both contexts (e.g. fewer, between).

A further translation challenge is how mathematics is represented in multiple ways. And so, when you read or write...

The equivalent sentence in words to be read is...
'The sum of the squares of two consecutive positive even integers is 340.'
( Schleppegrell, 2007)

Of course, many maths problems combine these representations, so that reading is a tricky, multi-faceted act for pupils. Careful, slow reading, and re-reading, is often necessary to actually unpack the mathematical operations required by pupils.

In US research, perhaps unsurprisingly, it found that ' 'nationally, children perform 10% to 30% worse on arithmetic word problems than on comparable problems presented in numeric format."

Teachers of maths will testify to the challenge of multi-step word problems. We can be confident then that reading in maths *really* does matter. Precision with mathematical talk will matter. Explicitly teaching on ' how to read like a mathematician ' could prove beneficial for those pupils struggling with word problems.

What other solutions can help? Explicit vocabulary instruction is likely one useful strategy. Keeping a glossary of mathematical terms, along with accompanying diagrams and representations could help ( this may be particularly beneficial for EAL pupils too).

Being explicit and strategic about how you read - and re-read - maths problems is likely to help many pupils who are grappling simultaneously with learning the mathematics and the language of mathematics.

The deft interplay, flipping between everyday language to mathematical terms, and back again, by expert maths teachers, will of course prove vital when teaching maths and the reading of mathematical problems or textbooks. ' Maths talk' will prove crucial for young children, whilst continuing to be vital at every key stage.

Reading matters in maths, more than most teachers, and pupils, may assume.

Related resources:

ACER, from Australia, have produced an excellent digest on language in mathematics - HERE.

Maths mastery have produced a handy vocabulary list - HERE.

A new resource from the EEF on addressing misconceptions - 'REACT to Misconceptions' - is a useful approach to consider in relation to language being a barrier to mathematical understanding - HERE.

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Does reading *really* matter in mathematics?

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Every teacher recognises that every subject is mediated by reading skill, but it matters in some more than others, right? Does it really matter that much in maths? When I speak to teachers, or those school leaders responsible for aspects of literacy whole school, the refrain they often relate is that reading simply doesn't matter so much in maths.

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Please complete the Google Form evaluation. Your feedback is appreciated.

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Please complete the Google Form evaluation. Your feedback is appreciated.

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Please read each of the statements below, and rate the extent to which you agree. 1= Disagree 2= Partially agree 3 = Agree 4= Strongly agree