Reading Intensive Programme - Session on Vocabulary & Decoding

 

Yet again, another very busy but well-constructed session from the Research Team at Manaiakalani. 

Vocabulary is the key to learning.  We kicked off by having a korero from Dorothy Burt on vocab growth being directly related to achievement.  Many of our learners start school on the back foot.  As schools, we have. the job of each child learning 8-10 new words a week, 700 a year and being able to use and understand these words in context. 

We cannot leave the teaching of vocabulary and decoding to chance.  It needs to be planned for.  Students need to learn how to explore words - one exposure is not enough.  We need to raise children's (and our teachers) lexical bar and find the Goldilocks zone - just right to give some stretch and challenge to their learning. 

There are four approaches to explicit vocabulary instruction.  These are:

1. Build word consciousness
2. Deliberate, robust teaching of words (affixes, base words, contexts)
3. Skills for cracking unfamiliar words
4. Morphology - the study of base words & subject related vocab

Make teaching direct, playful, interactive and do a
follow-up!

Yes, we did cover off some aspects such as onset & rhyme, phonemes & multi-syllabic division as students need to strengthen their phonological awareness and skills - to be able to recognise, sound and manipulate words. 

Morphology is the study of morphemes - this includes affixes (new word for me today) and root / base words.  Teaching morphology supports the following:

Vocabulary comprehension

Chunking (or reading words aloud)

Spelling

Overall reading comprehension

Students can learn to find the smaller, known words inside bigger words e.g. un-afford-able.  The root word carries the meaning.

We need to start planning for this learning ASAP.  Yes, it can be incidental at times.  

Here's a nice thought to finish with:

Teaching students meanings of common affixes and strategy use to infer word meanings plays a big role in vocab development.