Each week some ‘words of the week’ are being uploaded to the noticeboard and the blog for all year groups. For each year group we have allocated a different word to focus on for that week. However, students can, and should, be encouraged to also look at the other words too. We will work through the alphabet, where each week another letter will feature..

The rationale behind doing this is to encourage and champion a strong vocabulary profile for the whole school and many of the words that are chosen will be “tier two” words. These are words that appear with high frequency across all subjects and may be multiple meaning vocabulary (words such as masterpiece, fortunate, industrious, measure, and benevolent). Research suggests that tier two words are “frequently encountered in complex written texts and are particularly powerful because of their wide applicability to many sorts of reading.” Hence, it is important that students become as familiar with this type of vocabulary as they often are with tier three words (subject specific terminology). Therefore, we believe it will be beneficial in helping our students to engage with these words when they appear.