Lessons · Teaching · vocabulary in three tiers
Words come in three tiers
Words sort into three tiers: everyday words almost everybody already has, the useful words that turn up across every subject, and the technical words that belong to one topic. The middle tier is where teaching time pays.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
You have twenty minutes a week for vocabulary and a list of forty words. The tier one words are already there. The tier three words the topic teaches anyway. The dozen tier two words in the middle are the ones that decide whether somebody can read a science paper at fourteen, and they are the ones nobody teaches.
How to think about it
Sort the list into three columns before you teach a single word of it. Then spend the time on column two: words like observe, compare, gradual, consequence, which appear everywhere and are explained nowhere.
Worked example
Tier 1: dog, run, happy, tableAlready known by nearly every speaker. No teaching time at all.
Tier 2: observe, compare, gradual, consequence, approximateIn every subject and every text, and almost never in conversation. This is the column.
Tier 3: photosynthesis, igneous, denominatorBelongs to one topic, and that topic teaches it.
From 40 words: 18 in tier 1, 13 in tier 2, 9 in tier 3The sort, done. Thirteen words get the twenty minutes.
Your turn
A list of 36 words sorts into 15 in tier one and 7 in tier three. Write the line that gives the tier two count.
36 - 15 - 7 = words
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Spending vocabulary time on tier three words. They are the subject, and the lesson about the subject teaches them; the time buys you nothing you were not already getting.