Workshop: build your own word bank
Ākonga collect unfamiliar words from their own reading, work the meaning from context, and check it — including te reo Māori terms — keeping a personal glossary.
- Reading Workshop move: Personal glossary built from own reading
- Evidence it produces: Three words with the context clue that gave the meaning
Route status: the learning intentions and mini-lesson scaffold are shared with the seminar route; the Do Now, activities, conferences, evidence and exit below are this route’s own. The difference is how ākonga work — their own chosen texts, individual evidence, and one-to-one conferencing — not which strategies are taught.
Lesson 2: Decoding Vocabulary in Context & Utilising Te Reo Māori Glossaries
Building confident, active readers through Te Ao Māori perspectives, comprehension strategies, and rich Aotearoa texts.
🎯 Ngā Whāinga Akoranga | Learning Intentions
Context clue strategies (definition clues, synonym/antonym clues, example clues, morphology/root words), and using bilingual glossaries to understand te reo Māori concepts (e.g. kaitiakitanga, manaakitanga, mauri).
Use surrounding text clues to infer unknown word meanings, apply prefix/suffix decoding, and look up Māori concepts in bilingual text glossaries.
⚡ Whakaoho | Do Now: Collect your resistors (8 mins)
From your own current reading, collect three words you could not confidently define on sight — words that resisted you. Copy each with its full sentence into your journal. These, not a supplied list, are today’s working material.
🔍 Activity 1: Solve your own words (22 mins)
Work each of your three words through the context-clue toolkit: definition clues, synonym or contrast clues, example clues, and word parts (prefix, suffix, root). For each word record which clue type finally cracked it — and be honest when one resists everything: an unsolved word with a named reason teaches more than a bluffed definition.
Where the word is kupu Māori: use the text’s own glossary or the source itself. Te reo Māori is not guessing material — if your text carries a bilingual glossary, that is the authority, and the glossary entry is your evidence.
🪑 While they work: reading conferences (run through Activity 1 mins)
Confer one-to-one with four or five ākonga, prioritising anyone whose exit slip last lesson showed evidence-free answers. Keep each conference under four minutes and record one line per learner on your conference sheet: text, strategy seen, next move. Everyone else keeps working — the conference is a conversation about their book, not a test.
Conference questions for this lesson:
- Which of your three words did context solve? Read me the sentence and name the clue type.
- Which word resisted? What did you try, and what would you need to solve it?
- If your text has a glossary, when did you decide to use it rather than infer?
📝 Activity 2: Journal — word capture (15 mins)
Complete Section 2 of your Reading Journal: for each collected word — the sentence it lived in, the clue type used, the meaning you settled on, and a check (does your meaning survive being read back into the sentence?). Keep a running list at the back of your journal of solved words from your own reading; it grows all unit.
🚪 Exit (5 mins)
Your strongest solve of the day: the word, the sentence, the clue type. From your own book, in your own hunt.
🏫 Kaiako Planning & Pedagogy Notes
Curriculum alignment: Te Mātaiaho, English, Phase 3 (Years 7–8). This lesson builds comprehension, critical literacy and cultural connectedness through Aotearoa literature and pūrākau. The unit's one verified Te Mātaiaho anchor is recorded on the curriculum companion; no further statement is claimed for this lesson until one is verified.