Explicit vocabulary teaching: developing reading confidence and achievement in disadvantaged Y6 pupils

The aim of this study was to investigate if the teaching of vocabulary could lead to increased confidence and achievement in reading for disadvantaged Y6 children. The literature highlighted the importance of teaching vocabulary from an early age in order to have the greatest impact and to ensure that children are taught a range of strategies that they can then apply independently to work out unknown words. Following the literature review, I was interested to investigate how far daily teaching of vocabulary closes the vocabulary gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children. In addition, I also wanted to find out if explicitly teaching vocabulary impacted on children’s reading comprehension skills and confidence. In March 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic led to the shut down of schools across the country which meant I was unable to carry out my planned intervention. I had already collected some data from questionnaires, vocabulary and reading tasks along with reading. From this data, I found that some of the more accomplished disadvantaged readers still lacked confidence in their own ability. In addition, the data found that some of the children with poor vocabulary knowledge passed the reading test whereas others who had a wide vocabulary knowledge scored poorly. This suggests that whilst vocabulary knowledge is important; there are also other factors which contribute to being a successful reader.