Explanations

Improving Literacy in Geography

Fiona Sheriff

24th January 2025

“Miss, how do you say that country’s name?” Students were labelling countries in Asia and had stumbled across Kyrgyzstan. The array of consonants had left them bewildered and their understanding of how to pronounce words phonetically was challenged by this unique country name.

Geography could be a language all of its own, with so many specialist terms and complex spellings used every lesson. How can we help students to broaden their geographical vocabulary and to feel confident in using difficult to pronounce words?

Literacy unlocks the whole curriculum, and if we can’t say or a particular word, we will avoid using it. If students can read the word, they can say the word and begin to understand it and want to use it in their work. Our teaching of vocabulary should be explicit and intentional, rather than accidental or incidental. Of course, there will be times that students will discover a new piece of vocabulary, and a dynamic opportunity will arise to teach it.

When thinking about what vocabulary to explicitly teach our students we need to consider the tier 2 and tier 3 vocabulary. Tier 2 words are the robust, academic vocabulary that students will encounter across a range of subject areas, these could be words such as economy, environment and population. Tier 3 words are the subject specific vocabulary that students need to understand as part of the GCSE specifications and within the KS3 curriculum, words such as xerophyte, gentrification and lahar.

Explicit vocabulary instruction can be broken down into four parts:

  1. Introduce the new vocabulary: The teacher verbally introduces the new word and they share it within the context of the lesson.
  2. Say the new vocabulary: Using techniques such as “I say, You say”, the teacher will say the new key word and students will repeat it through choral repetition. This enables students and the teacher to check their pronunciation of the word.
  3. Define the new vocabulary and explore it: Students should get a clear definition of the new word. They then have an opportunity to explore the key word using etymology, morphology or a Frayer Model.
  4. Use the new vocabulary: Students should apply the word to their written work. This could be through writing it in a sentence or using it within the paragraph they are about to write.

Alex Quigley, author of ‘Closing the Vocabulary Gap’ (2018) uses a method called the ‘SEEC’ model. This is a similar method of explicitly teaching new vocabulary....

  1. Select a word: Selecting key words which will help students to improve their work or to access a particular unit of work.
  2. Explain and explore: The provision of a student-friendly definition of the word, saying it aloud to understand how to say the word and then putting it into the context of your subject and topic.
  3. Consolidate: Using the word throughout the lesson to embed understanding and recalling understanding of the key word in retrieval activities.

So, how might this look within a geography lesson?

If we take the word regeneration, this might be the path we use to explicitly teach that vocabulary...

When exploring new vocabulary, we can also use the Frayer Model to help students to understand the word. These can be pre-printed with some information filled in, or left blank for students to fill in. As these become part of a vocabulary routine, students will complete them with more confidence.

You can download our free Frayer Model template at the end of this blog.

The more exposure our students have to complex vocabulary, and the more we explicitly teach it, the more confident they will become in their reading and writing. Students will begin to also be able to decode new vocabulary, particularly when they begin to understand the meanings of the prefix and suffix of words.

Back to Kyrgyzstan... How did my students become more confident in saying and writing this country name? Through the explicit teaching of the word and through choral repetition to check pronunciation. In case you were wondering, Kyrgyzstan means Land (Stan – country) of the Forty (Kyrg) Tribes (yz).

Download your free Frayer Model template here.

Fiona Sheriff

Fiona Sheriff is an experienced Head of Geography in Northampton and Co-Head of Education and Outreach for the UK Polar Network. She is an experienced examiner, an author, a regular speaker for the RGS and has been a Fawcett Fellow. In 2024 Fiona was a recipient of the GA Award for Excellence and the RGS Ordnance Survey Award for Excellence in Secondary Geography Education.

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