The deliberate use of literacy strategies can make a real difference to your students. The strategies outlined below and which I will add to over the term can be used to:
- introduce new words and terms to students;
- help students to solve unknown words and terms;
- give students opportunities to use new words and terms
To refresh your memory of some of the vocabulary strategies introduced last year go to these PD Bite posts:
- concept circles
- guardian of the word
- vocabulary snowball
- disappearing definition
- other vocabulary strategies
This week's strategy is WORD MAP
This strategy involves the students in brainstorming words that relate to a single "focus word" chosen by the teacher.
Purpose: constructing a word map enables teachers to find out what relevant words the students know already and to introduce new words.
Instructions (online and you can also download/ print off a PDF from this site)
Professional Reading
Secondary literacy focus (from the Education Gazette) - A teacher professional development initiative embedded within the direction of The New Zealand Curriculum supports secondary teachers to improve student literacy across the curriculum.
