Spelling & vocabulary, unpacked

The NSW English K–10 Syllabus describes vocabulary in three tiers:

Tier 1: everyday words most students already know, like walk or happy.
Tier 2: words that appear across many texts and subjects but rarely come up in everyday talk, like curious, determined or ancient.
Tier 3: subject-specific words, like photosynthesis or federation.

Tier 2 words give you the most value for explicit teaching. Students meet them in books, but they're unlikely to pick them up from conversation, and once learnt they can be used in almost any piece of writing. Tier 3 words matter when they're central to understanding a text or topic.

Each week, students meet six key Tier 2 and/or Tier 3 words in the fluency passage. Four of them then become the focus of Sentence of the Day, so students practise using them in their own sentences.

Knowing a word isn't all or nothing. A student might recognise determined when they read it, explain it when asked, and still never use it in their own writing. The goal is that last step, and it takes more than a definition.

Lesson 1: introduce. Say and read each word together. Explain its meaning in the context of the fluency passage, and talk about where and how it was used. Have students use the word orally in a new context, then discuss how they could use it in their own writing. Add all six words to the Vocabulary Wall for the week.

Lessons 2 and 3: retrieve. Come back to the Vocabulary Wall and retrieve the words through quick oral discussion:

What does this word mean?
Where did we meet it in the text?
Can you use it in a sentence?
How could we use it in our own writing?

Each retrieval strengthens the word a little more. Four of the six words also appear in Sentence of the Day, so by the end of the week students are reaching for them in their own writing.

A spelling list learnt for Friday's test is often forgotten by Monday. Investigating how sounds are spelt builds knowledge students can use on words they've never seen.

Lesson 1: investigate. Introduce the week's focus phoneme and have students repeat it. Display the investigation words, then read each one aloud, say and segment it into phonemes, and identify the grapheme that represents the focus phoneme. Compare the different graphemes, sort the words by grapheme and add them to the class spelling chart. Ask: What do you notice? How many different ways is this phoneme represented?

Lesson 2: practise. Review the focus phoneme and graphemes. Practise selected words using say → segment → spell → check, then have students generate more words with the focus phoneme and sort them by grapheme. Talk about the patterns and clear up any misconceptions.

Lesson 4: dictate. Briefly retrieve the focus phoneme and investigation words, then dictate selected words and a sentence connected to the week's learning. Students listen, say and segment, record the word or sentence, identify the focus grapheme, then reread, check and correct. The sentence is also a chance to apply the week's vocabulary, punctuation, grammar or word study.

In Lesson 3, students explicitly explore one aspect of word knowledge that connects authentically to the week's spelling, vocabulary, reading or writing. Depending on the words, that might be:

morphology and word families
base words, prefixes and suffixes
inflectional endings
spelling changes when adding suffixes
compound words
homophones and homographs
etymology and word origins

Take the base word act. Once students know it, they can build and spell action, actor, react and interactive, and make a good guess at their meanings. Model selected words and talk about how their structure, spelling, history or meaning helps us understand and spell them.

Students then complete the weekly Word Investigation Map and apply their learning in a sentence connected to the week's reading or writing.