A pilot study in one of our Hackney Secondary schools led by Word Aware Trainer Emma Eaton-Rosen has shown promising results for the use of the Word Aware programme within the English curriculum for Year 7 students. Word Aware originated in Hackney with its authors Stephen Parsons and Anna Branagan although previously it has been little used in Secondary schools despite the increasing vocabulary demands year after year.
In this study students were taught using the word aware programme and resources for a term and showed improvements on their ability to recognise and define a variety of targeted words. The confidence of students also improved. Teachers reported that they had enjoyed using the approach and were using it more widely than with their Year 7 cohort.
Although inevitably due to Coronavirus there were some barriers to overcome we are very excited to continue to expand the use of this evidence based approach for all students to support vocabulary learning.
If you are interested in knowing more about word aware or how it works please get in touch using the email address huh-tr.sltinfo@nhs.net.
