Research abounds on the devastating long-term impact of a poor vocabulary – a child’s vocabulary at the age of 4 is a reliable predictor of their academic attainment at 18.
The 2018 Oxford Language Report revealed 49% of Year 1 pupils have such a limited vocabulary that it affects their learning, while in a recent OUP survey, 86% of primary school teachers said children with limited vocabularies would struggle to read national test papers and so receive lower results than their peers.
Strong literacy skills have a proven positive impact – not just on academic success across the curriculum, but on social confidence and career prospects beyond school. Vocabulary is a fundamental part of literacy, yet so often teaching it is left to chance. In 2015, this promoted our founders – English teachers then working in London – to draw on their classroom experience to design a targeted vocabulary app.
Bedrock Vocabulary is a comprehensive online vocabulary curriculum with a statistically proven impact on its hundreds of thousands of users across the world.
Our curriculum not only increases individual student attainment, but also provides powerful tools to track student progress across groups, helping to improve language across all groups of learners. We can help turn your school into a word-rich environment that sows the seeds for success in Year 6 SATs and far beyond.
Bedrock Vocabulary provides:
An unrivalled learning experience
- 99 engaging, cross-curricular fiction and non-fiction topics boost learners’ cultural capital. KS2 topics include the Solar System, Galileo, prehistoric cave artists, and the story of King Arthur
- Students’ entry point to the curriculum is based on their current ability level, which is determined by our diagnostic Alpha Test
- Words are defined and represented in multiple authentic contexts, from images and KS2-friendly descriptions to synonyms, antonyms and students’ own imaginative writing
- All topics are human narrated, meaning we teach pronunciation along with meaning and spelling. Learners can use new words in conversation without fear of saying them wrong!
- After learning new language in context, students undertake fun, low-stakes assessment via quizzes and multiple-choice questions to secure their understanding
- Our deep-learning algorithm ensures spaced learning and that recently learned words are recapped at the start of each lesson, improving long-term retention of new vocabulary
- Lessons constantly adapt to individual learners’ ability and pace, ensuring maximum knowledge acquisition and retention
- Our curriculum is suitable for independent readers of all abilities. In fact, SEN, PP and EAL learners all make statistically better-than-average progress
- Learners are motivated by instant feedback throughout each lesson, and are rewarded with a celebratory certificate at the end of each block
- Maximum progress is made with just two 20-minute lessons each week, making it easy to set as class or home work, or as part of your blended learning strategy
Impact measurement
- Bedrock Vocabulary is statistically proven to improve vocabulary, with all groups of learners making significant progress
- Teachers can easily monitor progress via their dashboard, instantly accessing both word-level data and overall trends for both individual learners and specific cohorts, like class, gender or SEN, PP or EAL. This data can inform classroom practice and direct attention precisely where it’s needed
- Each student account has a free linked parent account, enabling parents to get weekly updates on their child’s learning. Using new words as a family at home helps embed knowledge – something families tell us is particularly valuable
- Our curriculum and the progress data it provides can support questions Ofsted may ask about your school’s literacy teaching, as part of their inspection framework
Administration
- Bedrock saves teachers valuable time, as lessons are completely self-marking
- There’s nothing to install – the programme is accessed online
- We provide unlimited support – every school has a dedicated account manager who is always available via email, web chat or phone
“The children are applying the new vocabulary they have learnt to their writing.”
Primary school teacher, Stockport
To find out how we can revolutionise the way your school tackles the language gap, to find out more and start a free 30-day trial for up to 35 learners and two teachers. For 10% off your first invoice, quote TeachWireOct20.
