A parent forum PPT exploring how we (as a school) build student lexicons and transfer this across into their writing.

1. BUILDING STRONGER WRITERS
THROUGH UNDERSTANDING AND
EXPLORING
Key Vocabulary

2. And a big thank you to Jodi Fraser who has been our
word guru at St Ives!

4. Writers paint pictures for their readers. The strength of the
imagery created comes from the depth and appropriateness
of the vocabulary used.
For example compare these two:
“We were waiting for the circus to open for the evening.”
“The circus looks abandoned and empty. But you think perhaps you can smell
caramel wafting through the evening breeze, beneath the crisp scent of the autumn
leaves. A subtle sweetness at the edges of the cold.
The sun disappears completely beyond the horizon, and the remaining luminosity
shifts from dusk to twilight. The people around you are growing restless from
waiting, a sea of shuffling feet, murmuring about abandoning the endeavour in
search of someplace warmer to pass the evening. You yourself are debating
departing when it happens.” The Night Circus

6. What is Key Vocabulary?
These words are called key words and they hold most of the meaning.

8. Sorting Words into Tiers
Use your page that is divided into 3 tiers…
to sort these 20 words:
mother complex lava estimate car
dog isosceles mum sad book
measure anxious neutral epidermis dynamic
artistic orange collaborate asphalt girl

9. Carefully decide how many key words and which are tier
one, two and three?
The skull is a kind of bony box which protects your brain.
The little baby gurgled happily as she played in the sandpit.
The referee stopped the game because the player hurt his ankle.
The small dog was frightened by the big, bad wolf.

10. What is a lexicon?

13. To grow and develop as a better reader and writer, it is
important to try and build and add to your bank of key words
(key vocabulary) in every tier every day.
Why are we focusing on Tier 2 words as
opposed to Tier 3 ones?

14. Your turn:
The girl went home along the road.
At the moment these are all Tier One words.
How can you add/change this sentence to
incorporate tier two words to build depth?
……………………………………………………………………………………………..
………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………

16. Every time you read a new word, to add it to your word bank in your brain (and make
it stay there) it helps to do 4 things:
1. Make sure you can read it, can you pronounce it correctly?
2. Ask yourself what it means to try and create a definition. You need to be a
detective. You may need to talk about the word, ask someone, look at the words
around it in the sentence or look up it’s meaning in a dictionary.
3. You need to make a picture in your mind of the word. It may help to draw it. This
is called visualising.
4. You need to be able to put the word in a sentence of your own to check that you
are going to be able to use it again.

17. Here is an example of these 4 steps using a tier 1 word:
The word ‘oven’ will definitely be stored in your brain after that!
Now your turn using some tier 2 words…..

19. Writing is a complicated thing!
• Vocabulary is important but let’s not forget connection making!
• People can’t write if they don’t live and experience, laugh and cry, try and fail, explore and
play and have adventures.
• For an author vocabulary always links to what they know. It can’t exist (or be utilised
properly) in a vacuum!
• Please please please don’t overschedule your boys. They need unstructured time to
experience their world!

20. Questions – about Tier Words?