Vocabulary - Reviewing our Curriculum in the light of the Ofsted Research Review

 Here we go. Unlike the previous two posts on Transition and on Phonics, this one is an issue where we are going to have to think about making a volte-face and throwing out our bathwater, or deciding to stand our ground holding on to our babies. Because this post is about reviewing our curriculum in response to the Ofsted Research Review findings on Vocabulary.

For the Ofsted Review, Vocabulary teaching is a central plank (or pillar) of language-learning. It should be carefully planned. With scheduled re-visiting, involving testing, and meeting words in different topic contexts and in different skills. Language-learning should not be a series of units in which lists (mainly nouns) are learned and then abandoned in a new unit. Pupils should learn more verbs and more high frequency words that are not specific to any one topic.

This neat model of pupils learning words, testing themselves, meeting them in context, being tested by the teacher, then being retested later just in time for the curve of forgetting to be caught and corrected, is all too neat.

Some pupils learn the words. Others don't. They might recognise them but not be able to spell them. Or use them in a sentence. Learning isn't a one off that can be scheduled, ticked off, re-visited just in time so absolutely nothing is forgotten. At the same time as moving forward with grammar and communication. With all the pay-offs between support, independence, complexity, spontaneity, accuracy.

It is much more messy. And it is a mistake to have something neat on paper that doesn't correspond to reality. You can't make reality fit the map. The map helps you negotiate the terrain. And once you start moving, you keep your eye on the terrain, not the map. If it's a bit foggy, slow down and really concentrate on the road. Don't try to drive in fog by watching your satnav. It will end badly.

Keep your eye on the learner. How well do they know what they have already learned? How well can they use it? What do they need next that extends what they can already do? Should you spend more time on something that's not quite sorted yet? Or move on and come back to it later? Teaching them something new might add to what they know, or it might muddle it. Is this a problem or a stage to go through? If they forget something, might it be because that is an important part of how learning happens?

So now we are focusing on the learner and the messy process of learning, we can start to talk about how we want language (and not just vocabulary) to accrue.

We talk to our pupils about having a snowball of French. We talk to them about their responsibility to gather it all up, push it together, make it their own, and stop it melting. We also use the same metaphor to structure our curriculum and the language we teach them. It has to hold together to make a compact core that can get bigger and bigger. Once it reaches a certain size, then more things will start to stick.

Screen shot from Steve Smith's webinar

In his recent linguascope webinar, Steve Smith made this snowball visualisation of how our curriculum works. It also works the same way for the units within any of the Years, with the content in Unit 1 being subsumed into Unit 2, and so on.

The teacher and the learner are curating their growing snowball of French. The French that doesn't stick to the snowball risks melting and being forgotten. To avoid this, we don't necessarily go chasing the melting snow. We concentrate on compacting the core. And what I think makes this work, is requiring pupils to use their French. It's when you have to express yourself, or be creative or communicate, that you find out how your French all fits together.

Our Year 8 curriclum exemplars show how each Unit builds this snowball. There is nothing that isn't joined up, and nothing is left behind. For vocabulary, our Quizlet sets show how each Unit snowballs, from small chunks, to model answers. And how the next Unit grows from the previous one.

And Vocabulary isn't really taught as stand-alone vocabulary. It is taught in chunks and in context. For example we don't teach weather as a "set" of words. It is taught in if sentences to add on to using verb + infinitive: if it is sunny I can... but if it rains I have to... As part of developing an extended answer with more detail and sophistication.

I think this means that we do have "a strong verb lexicon" in that our core of language is based around opinions, verb + infinitive, and then narration. Although these may or may not be the verbs that Ofsted or NCELP think are the most frequent.

Which moves us on to the importance that the Ofsted Research Review gives to "high frequency" words... We definitely have a core of key words that we never let go of. This is not the same as the high frequency words as defined by their occurrence in native speaker corpora. This is one area where we are going to have to examine our curriculum and make changes.

From our KS3 review

You can tell from the first part of this post that we are not going to abandon our core. So the question for us is to work out what "high frequency" vocabulary fits in with the core. And at what point the core is strong and sticky enough, that the snowball can start to pick up other things. Just as once it's big enough, a snowball can start to collect sticks, stones and bits of carrot from snowballs other people let melt. (As I wrote here for an OUP guest blog.)

Firstly, some of the highest frequency words can't be treated as vocabulary but have to be dealt with as grammar. So things like à can change to au or aux. And can mean "at" or "to" or "in". Or even "with the" as in La Dame aux Camélias.

Secondly, yes, we can look and see where our core can pick up more words. But that will be determined on our own terms, not because of the "frequency" of a word in a corpus. For example, much more work on time words, such as sometimes, often, never, after, yesterday, two days ago, on Saturday, would fit in well.

Thirdly, with a group with a strong snowball, I have been working on a class novel. This is as a deliberate counter balance to our curriculum around a narrow (but growing) core. And one of the things that have come out of it is meeting lots of the words that naturally occur in authentic texts. Words like "cela". So we can see when pupils have a consolidated core snowball, what else will stick to it, even if it isn't carefully selected to naturally cohere.

I will certainly be looking at what NCELP and exam boards come up with for lists of "frequent words". And deciding if they fit into Firstly, Secondly or Thirdly as above.

Writing this has made me realise that perhaps for us, Grammar and Vocabulary aren't separate pillars. Maybe we have more of a lexico-grammar approach. But not because we teach grammar lexically. More because we teach vocabulary to fit in with a developing coherent repertoire of language the pupils can deploy. We are deliberately building a coherent core of language that fits together.

I have written here about the fact that maybe our curriculum is moving in the opposite direction to other schools. We stripped down what we teach to a core of the most powerful language about 15 years ago, to concentrate on pupils getting good at using their language. We might be at a stage where we are looking to add more things back in. Now we have a strong core, more things can stick to it. But this needs to be because it makes sense for us, not because we drop everything we are doing and do what we think Ofsted want.

More on this to come, with posts on what the Ofsted Research Review says about Grammar, Assessment and Feedback, Communication and Culture, and Target Language use.