This year, at North Ryde Public School we continued our focus on improving Reading Comprehension. This year the focus was on building vocabulary and continuing to work on comprehension strategies. Vocabulary plays an important role in reading and it is key to reading comprehension. We cannot understand what we are reading without knowing what most of the words mean. 

This year teachers at North Ryde PS engaged in multiple professional learning sessions on Vocabulary and its role in literacy. As a result, teachers were able to implement the explicit teaching of vocabulary into literacy lessons. One way this was implemented was by introducing Word of the Day/Week. Another focus is to encourage students to be meaning detectives (inferred vocabulary), so that students use the clues in the text as well as what they know to make an inference about new vocabulary. In writing the focus was on transferring the learnt knowledge of Tier 2 words into their writing.

When explicitly teaching Vocabulary, the focus is on Tier two words. 

Tier 1: Most Common Words and easily understood

Tier 2: Uncommon in everyday language, sophisticated words, common in text

Tier 3: Specific to a Key Learning Area 

The focus on vocabulary also aims to foster a curiosity for words that makes learning infectious and inspiring, making students think harder than they have thought possible about words.

Here is an example of just 10 words of focus that students have learnt this year in relation to the focus of the explicit teaching of Vocabulary within Reading:

Kindergarten: weary, chuckle, trusty, shrinking, generous, grumpy, dare, tender, gasp, gushes 

Year 1: briefly, firmly, perfect, improve, groan, announce, sprinkle, sob, devour, calm 

Kindergarten and Year 1 use a scripted program (InitiaLit)for their vocabulary component. 

Year 2: bold, elegant, accomplished, fascinating, doubt, gradual, required, tend, perform, rely. 

Stage 2: effervescent, etiquette, exuberant, tranquil, dollop, enchanted, boondoggle, succulent, flabbergasted, befuddle

Stage 3: churlish, jocular, ostentatious, plucky, tranquil, fastidious, zealous, gluttonous, imperturbable, superficial

Michelle Caruso 

Assistant Principal