We can also train Teachers and Teaching Assistants in using Word Aware. The next training date is the 27th March 2018 at the RCSLT in London – follow this link to Eventbrite to book your place Teaching covers phonological sound, syntactic grammar and semantic meaning. In other words, we will be teaching the sound and initial letters of the word; what word class it is (for example, a noun, adjective, adverb, verb) including how the word is structured in a sentence; and what the word means. Children will have access to dictionaries to look up the word, they will consider synonyms and will create their own sentences with the word to consolidate meaning. Other activities used include: word raps, word songs, acting out the word, discussing prefixes and suffixes, symbols or pictures, spelling of the word, syllables, rhyme, physically experiencing the word (where possible), using objects, links to what the children already know and identifying related situations that the word does not apply to.

This is a highly practical, comprehensive resource designed to support Early Years practitioners in the provision of effective vocabulary development in preschool children of all abilities. It is based on the same theory as the existing 'Word Aware' resource (9780863889554) but is adapted for Early Years. Word Aware is mostly a whole school approach, with small groups also held for children who need either pre-teaching of vocabulary, or who need to acquire word learning skills before they can benefit fully from the rest of the approach. The approach is about making words a priority and there are some lovely ideas throughout of how to do this in school without it taking loads of extra time and planning. This free resource includes a series of visual summaries that provide an overview of the Word Aware Approach for Early Years Practitioners. It also includes several teaching concepts that will promote children's natural word learning.At Thinking Talking we are dedicated to improving children and young people’s language and communication skills, but we understand that time is precious, so we develop time efficient interventions that work. Browse a wider range of our Speechmark books. They cover early years, inclusion and special education and more. Set one: Longer version for schools which are still open for selected children. These activities may also be adapted and sent home.

Consultative support, including coaching and class demonstrations, can be arranged following your training to help you get off to a flying start! Word Aware 1 is an invaluable tool for teachers and other professionals looking to support children as they broaden their vocabulary. It is particularly suited to children aged 5–11 years but can easily be adapted for older children.This approach is full of practical and inspiring ideas that can be easily applied by busy classroom practitioners to develop both spoken and written vocabulary. Word of the day or week– as a family see how many times you can use your target word in a meaningful way during the week. The only rules are the sentence must make sense and fit into your conversation.

It is based on a system called STAR (Blachowicz and Fisher, 2010) and I think this process is a really helpful way to think of vocabulary teaching. You can’t teach a word one day and then forget about it – it needs to be a much more systematic approach. STAR stands for Select Teach Activate Review. It obviously isn’t realistic to sum up the whole of the approach in one blog post, but I thought I would talk today about each of these 4 aspects a little bit. In the book, Stephen and Anna apply this to topics, literacy, concepts and emotions, but the principles are the same and I’ll talk about topic vocabulary here. Book 1: Teaching Vocabulary across the Day, across the Curriculum (age suitability: 5-11+) – Second Edition – Sep 2021 Remember to try and use these new words in your conversations to embed them into your child’s vocabulary

This well-rounded collection of research-based reading intervention strategies will support and inform your RTI (Response to Intervention) efforts. It is taken from Word Aware 2: Teaching Vocabulary in the Early Years by Stephen Parsons and Anna Brannigan and provides you with a chance to take a look inside this much loved resource. Word Aware has been developed by combining up to date research with extensive classroom experience. Stephen Parsons and Anna Branagan have been using this approach and training many practitioners since 2010. The end product is an effective and time efficient method for developing the spoken and written vocabulary of all children. It has been enthusiastically received by class teachers, head teachers, curriculum coordinators, Special Needs co-coordinators, Learning Support Assistants and Speech and Language Therapists / Pathologists. Word Aware can be delivered as a whole-school INSET training day or as a series of twilight sessions. Choose your main focus: The teacher will select the appropriate words to teach using the Word Aware approach. These will be really useful words which are likely to be encountered again in spoken language or reading. The average adult will have a good level of knowledge of the word. Topic words will be taught where they are core to topic learning.