The Internet is a minefield of useless websites, but sometimes you can unearth some gems. New AI applications, like ChatGPT, are making the news, with potential for useful vocabulary learning, applications for writing, the classroom, and more. For those seeking useful vocabulary websites, these 7 may just do the trick: This website can take extracts …
“Vocabulary knowledge is knowledge; the knowledge of a word not only implies a definition, but also implies how that word fits into the world.” Steven Stahl (2005) Developing vocabulary knowledge is so much more than word lists and student-friendly definitions. Even the most careful curation of vocabulary on a knowledge organiser may only give the …
When you explore the history and roots of a word – the etymology – you draw upon a rich story that can unlock understanding for our pupils in science, maths, geography, and more. It can add a layer of understanding that helps our novice pupils hook into a tricky academic term that may have remained …
Words are all around us. They are legion, ubiquitous and omnipresent in our daily lives. They live in families, possess histories, slide and break into parts, and connect across worlds, separating and connecting us. And yet, curiously, few of us know how we acquire them, learn them, connect them, and teach them best. It was …
The web is full of websites on vocabulary: good, bad and ugly. Here are six of my favourite free vocabulary websites that I think are useful for teachers and students alike: Describing Words This website has a simple premise: punch in a noun and you get countless descriptive words, with a helpful sort for …
A 10-year-old child who is a good reader will encounter something like 1 million words a year (around 12 novels), but crucially, approximately 20,000 of those words will prove unfamiliar (Oakhill et al. 2015). It is important then to support our pupils to develop an array of independent word learning strategies to explore and to …
“Stories are psychologically privileged in the human mind.” Daniel Willingham The mind thinks and remembers in stories. It is part of the architecture of human memory and our human experience. Given it is so rooted in how we think, storytelling proves vital to learning and is useful in all sorts of ways in the classroom. …
