HOW CAN I CHANGE MY TEACHING TO BE MORE EFFECTIVE FOR MY STUDENTS?

What was my teaching practice like before this inquiry?
I felt that I was doing a good job in writing and I was spending a fair bit of lesson time on vocabulary building before each lesson. I always felt that it is important that oral language  always precedes written language. Although I felt that I was doing enough to help students build a selection of appropriate vocabulary before writing, I now learned from the student voice that Vocabulary was still a big barrier to their writing, and I had a mission to change my teaching practice to make a difference.

What was the change?
I felt that I should have a closer focus on vocabulary, not only for writing lessons, but across the curriculum. When I began my Measurement strand, I prepared a word bank  of measurement vocabulary and to help students acquire the vocabulary, I added an illustration with each of the words. I used to mention the word and get students to draw the picture, and at other times, I would draw the illustration on the board and get the students to write the word it matches with.

Did it make a difference?
To begin with, my students loved the exercise of writing and drawing illustrations for the measurement vocabulary. Whereas previously I would merely put up and focus on the word and its spelling, here I was teaching them to make connections between the word and its illustration , which enhanced meaning. I could tell that students were understanding the measurement vocabulary and at the same time, without realising it, were learning to spell it.