High Impact Teaching Strategies

Example 1: Years 7/8 – Humanities

The Humanities teachers of a secondary school in regional Victoria identified the need to actively and consistently address literacy skills as part of their everyday teaching. By building the core vocabulary of their students, they aimed to support them to engage more deeply with complex issues and ideas. Working with a literacy coach, they planned and trialled a yearlong intervention designed to expose students to carefully selected ‘target words’ linked with the learning area content. The intervention sought to reinforce the use and meaning of target words via multiple exposures over a period of time. Working in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), teachers reviewed the unit topics to identify a list of content specific vocabulary all students need to understand and be able to use. They then pre-tested students to identify levels of understanding. The teachers collaborated to design learning activities that incorporated multiple exposures in different contexts over the year. Their intent was to teach and reinforce specific vocabulary and support transfer of learning across the planned units of work. Students initially encountered the words when reading a text or watching a video. From the moment a new word was introduced, students were exposed to it repeatedly via ‘friendly descriptions’ of what the word meant. Other strategies included using a vocabulary log, drawing a picture of the word, peer discussion on how and when to use the word, and consolidation activities at the end of each lesson. Over time, the use of the words was reinforced via ‘Do Now’ activities at the start of each lesson. These activities included games such as Pictionary, traffic light cups, homework activities, self-assessment and vocabulary walls. The PLC monitored the intervention’s implementation and at the end of the year teachers measured the impact of multiple exposures on student learning. The initiative was particularly successful because at the end of each unit students were able to track their progress by comparing their pre-test scores to the final vocabulary test scores.