For children to understand a text and ensure that they comprehend what they have read they must know the meaning of 95% of the words in a text.
Our pupils are faced with challenging texts on a daily basis and a good deal of the reading in our classrooms will include vocabulary that is unfamiliar and difficult.
The words we use can be organised in to three tiers:
We use Tier 1 words every day in the classroom
Tier 3 words are the technical vocabulary we use in our curriculum subjects
However, the Tier 2 words need to be taught explicitly so that our children can use them to make sense of the Technical Tier 3 Vocabulary.