The average scores of children from the primary schools who took both tests improved, on average, by a significant 16%. One school, which had embedded Vocabulous into its classroom dialogue, with “root of the week” posters displayed on the wall and frequent references back to previous weeks’ roots, recorded an average score improvement of 32%. 

Meanwhile, there was an average 13% improvement in students from the secondary schools who partook in both assessments. 

Year 5 students took part in focus groups with researchers. In response to being asked if they had noticed a difference in their learning and understanding since using Vocabulous, they all responded positively. They commenting upon the engaging, competitive and motivating aspects of the website and how their confidence has grown in reading and writing, in class, in tests and in their life outside of school.  

“It helps because if you’re doing guided reading, you maybe don’t know the word, but you can work it out,” one child remarked. 

“Vocabulous tells you the meaning and you can write the word in your stories,” said a second.  

A third pupil observed: “It teaches me about new words and then I read Harry Potter, for example, and new words I can just tell by looking at them.”

At the end of the first term of using Vocabulous, students were asked to give their feedback via an online form which it became clear that Vocabulous was having a positive impact on their learning and their enjoyment of their English/literacy lessons. 

For instance, at one secondary school, of 212 respondents, 42% of students thought Vocabulous was “definitely helping me”, 50% felt that it was helping “a bit” and 9% responded negatively. 

At one primary school, 100% of respondents stated that the website had been helping them learn new words (either “definitely” or “a bit”) and that they either “really” or “quite” like using it. 

By the end of the year, when all respondents to the final test were asked “Has Vocabulous helped you to build your vocabulary?”, 76% (474 respondents) answered “yes”. In response to the question “Has Vocabulous increased your confidence when you meet new words?”, 65% (406) said that it had.   

Teachers responding both in written feedback and in-person focus groups particularly commented upon their students’ enjoyment of the learning experience and the newfound confidence it had afforded them: 

“The children have really enjoyed it and they like the competition aspect and the leader board and (like us) to see what they’ve done,” said one secondary teacher. “It has built up students’ resilience and they are more willing to have a go at breaking words down and thinking about where they came from and working out prefixes and little triggers to say ‘oh we saw that in Vocabulous’.”  

The headteacher of one primary school, when discussing the high level of disadvantage faced by the majority of pupils at her school, said that using Vocabulous has “given them strategies to cope with the challenges they face” outside of the classroom. She drew the connection between Vocabulous use and recent spelling scores which were “the highest they’ve ever been”.   

Students clearly enjoyed using Vocabulous and commented particularly on the competitive element of the quizzes, stars acquisition and class leader. Half of the focus group talked about how much they enjoy learning about the gods and goddesses. 

The qualitative feedback received during the research trial was positive. As one teacher commented, Vocabulous is “absolutely fantastic for disadvantaged pupils to do in school” and can increase “their vocabulary to another level to what’s spoken at home”.