Expansive vocabulary
1. Embedding expansive vocabulary across the curriculum
Every subject comes with its own language: the key terms, concepts, and expressions that help students make sense of its ideas. Vocabulary instruction shouldn’t be treated as an optional extra, but as an integral part of teaching and lesson planning. When students actively use new vocabulary rather than simply recognising it, they build confidence and mastery across the curriculum.
Teachers can embed vocabulary meaningfully by:
· Identifying high-value words that stretch thinking and deepen understanding:
Not all words are equal in their impact on learning. High-value words are those that unlock core concepts, enable precision, and extend students’ ability to reason and articulate ideas. These might include academic verbs such as analyseor justify, or domain-specific terms that reveal key disciplinary knowledge. By identifying and prioritising these words in lesson planning, teachers help students access the language needed to think like scientists, historians, or artists.
· Planning for repetition and revisiting, ensuring new words become part of students’ active vocabulary:
Vocabulary acquisition is a gradual process that thrives on purposeful repetition. Students need multiple, spaced encounters with new words: hearing them, seeing them in context, and using them independently. Teachers can build this in through retrieval practice, low-stakes quizzes, or quick recap activities at the start and end of lessons. The goal is not just recognition, but confident recall and accurate use in varied contexts, helping words move from short-term awareness to long-term retention.
· Providing structured opportunities for students to use vocabulary aloud, in discussion, debate, presentation, and questioning:
Spoken language is a powerful bridge between learning and understanding. Giving students time and structure to verbalise new vocabulary helps them internalise meaning and practise applying it with purpose. Sentence stems, talk partners, or scaffolded discussion prompts can support less confident speakers while still promoting ambitious language. Whether in small-group debates or whole-class questioning, spoken practice turns passive vocabulary into active expression.
· Modelling academic language, showing students how subject-specific words function in authentic contexts:
Teachers play a vital role as linguistic role models; by deliberately using and unpacking academic and subject-specific language during teaching, they make visible the thought processes that underpin expert communication. This might mean narrating one’s thinking aloud, rephrasing student responses using more precise terminology, or demonstrating how to construct analytical sentences. When students regularly hear and see sophisticated vocabulary in action, they gain the tools to use it themselves with confidence and accuracy.
Risk-taking
2. Building confidence and encouraging linguistic risk-taking
To use ambitious language, students need a classroom culture that celebrates experimentation and accepts mistakes as part of learning. When students see that risk-taking with language is valued, they begin to own their voice and grow as articulate, independent thinkers.
Teachers can nurture this confidence by:
· Praising attempts to use new or challenging vocabulary, even when usage is imperfect:
When students take risks with ambitious language, their early attempts may be clumsy or incomplete, but this experimentation is a vital stage in developing fluency. By praising the effort rather than correcting the mistake immediately, teachers reinforce the message that progress matters more than perfection. This builds students’ confidence and encourages them to keep stretching their vocabulary range, knowing that the classroom is a space where linguistic ambition is always valued.
· Normalising exploration by encouraging students to “go off-piste”, to adapt, play with, and refine their language choices:
Language learning thrives on curiosity. When students feel free to test out new words, combine them in unusual ways, or attempt more sophisticated phrasing, they begin to take ownership of their vocabulary development. Encouraging this playful, exploratory mindset helps students understand that language is flexible, creative, and deeply personal. By modelling and celebrating these “off-piste” moments, teachers show that experimenting with language is a sign of intellectual engagement, not something to be avoided.
· Creating a safe space where curiosity about words is encouraged and failure is seen as a natural step toward fluency:
A vocabulary-rich environment relies on a culture of psychological safety. Students need to know that mistakes are not only tolerated but expected, they are a normal and necessary part of becoming a confident communicator. When teachers respond to errors with patience, humour, and constructive guidance, they help dismantle fear of failure. This opens the door for students to speak up more often, take more risks, and ask more questions about the words they encounter.
· Using feedback constructively, focusing on meaning and expression before technical accuracy:
Effective feedback in a vocabulary-focused classroom prioritises clarity of thinking over flawless execution. By responding first to the strength of the idea or the ambition of the vocabulary choice, teachers show students that communication comes before correction. Once meaning is established, gentle guidance can help refine grammar, syntax, or precision. This layered approach to feedback supports confidence, encourages deeper thinking, and ensures that technical accuracy develops without stifling creativity.
Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary
3. Teaching Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary explicitly
Closing the language gap requires intentional teaching of both academic (Tier 2) and subject-specific (Tier 3) vocabulary. By prioritising these layers of language, we unlock access to the curriculum and empower students to express themselves with confidence, precision, and depth.
Teachers can strengthen understanding by:
· Clarifying the difference: Tier 2 words (e.g. analyse, justify, evaluate) are cross-disciplinary, while Tier 3 words (e.g. photosynthesis, alliteration) are domain-specific:
Helping students understand the distinction between Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary gives them clarity about how language operates across subjects. Tier 2 words are powerful because they serve as the academic “glue” of the curriculum, they appear in exam questions, success criteria, and extended writing in every discipline. Tier 3 words, on the other hand, unlock the core concepts of each subject. By explicitly teaching the difference, teachers enable students to recognise not only what a word means, but how and where it functions in their learning.
· Teaching both systematically, ensuring students recognise, use, and connect them across contexts:
A systematic approach to vocabulary instruction ensures that Tier 2 and Tier 3 words are not encountered randomly, but embedded with purpose. This includes pre-teaching key terms, revisiting them throughout a unit, and ensuring that students encounter them in reading, writing, and speech. When vocabulary is introduced in coherent sequences, reinforced through repeated exposure and meaningful application, students begin to see the connections between words, ideas, and subjects.
· Building word consciousness, helping students notice patterns, roots, and relationships between words:
Word consciousness goes beyond memorisation; it’s about cultivating an awareness of how language works. By drawing students’ attention to prefixes, suffixes, etymology, and semantic relationships, teachers equip them with strategies to decode unfamiliar terms independently. For example, understanding that bio- relates to life or that -graphy relates to writing helps students make educated guesses about new vocabulary. This metacognitive understanding fosters independence, boosts reading comprehension, and empowers students to approach challenging texts with confidence.code unfamiliar terms independently. For example, understanding that bio- relates to life or that -graphy relates to writing helps students make educated guesses about new vocabulary. This metacognitive understanding fosters independence, boosts reading comprehension, and empowers students to approach challenging texts with confidence.
