Since vocabulary acquisition is being discussed, here's another excerpt from the Michaela book, describing how they incorporate a lot of reading into their lessons, and that they believe it's important for pupils to learn vocabulary by encountering it in multiple contexts:
At Michaela, all teachers embed reading into their lessons. Our philosophy is simple: anything you explain verbally could be written down for pupils to read. Not only does this approach iron out the problems some teachers may have with off-the-cuff explanations of new or complex concepts, it allows all children to read hundreds or thousands of words every lesson. If every teacher does this, it means that, on an average day, the weakest readers at Michaela will encounter around 12,000 words...
Whilst children are frequently given the opportunity to read aloud, we recognise that teachers are usually the best readers in the room. Teachers model expression, projection and pronunciation of difficult words. When the class comes across a new or particularly complex word, the teacher simply pauses to say ‘I say, you say’ before saying the word clearly, and the kids repeat it back in unison. If you ever come to visit Michaela, you will see how consistent this approach is. In every classroom, across the curriculum, this happens at some point every single lesson. Even in Maths, where pupils spend a huge amount of time practising and drilling themselves in core concepts and processes, many explanations are delivered through this medium.
The benefits are plentiful, as it gives pupils more access to more words in more contexts. Gradually, this builds pupils’ vocabularies and gives them access to a broad range of new, high level words. This approach also enables pupils to see and understand how the same words can be used in a variety of different ways. For example, the word ‘structure’ has subtly different uses in English, as in the structure of a poem, sentence or novel, than in Science, in terms of the structure of a cell, atom or molecule. Seeing the same words in different contexts helps to improve pupils’ understanding of the nuance of language. The cumulative effect of this exposure to such quantities of new words not only improves pupils’ reading ability and confidence in reading but also their courage to express themselves using a broader vocabulary.
(Before anyone suggests that 2000 words per lesson is a lot, my recollection from blogs about their approach is that the '12,000 words for the weakest readers' figure includes the reading of fiction done by form tutors with their classes in form time every day, and also the after school 'Reading Club' that the weakest readers attend.)