One vocabulary curriculum for a whole school
In my first semester at Dongsung Elementary I built a master word list meant to last: six grades, four proficiency levels per grade, 24 lists in all. Second semester and every term after it reuse the list instead of starting over.
Who did what. I designed the curriculum, the difficulty progression, and the test sequencing. The code is Claude's: I directed it to build the Python and lxml pipeline that produces print-ready tests and answer keys from a single source, and to track down a recurring formatting defect in the test template.
What I designed
- A difficulty progression aligned to CEFR levels, across the four levels.
- Test sequencing built on retrieval practice and spaced repetition. Word order is re-randomized on every test, and each test deliberately overlaps with the ones before it so words return after a gap.
- Uniqueness constraints across the proficiency groups, so lists do not quietly repeat each other.
- An audit of the full set for duplicates across grades and for translation ambiguity, the kind of word whose translation can mislead a student.
Why one source matters
Every test and answer key is generated from the same master list. Fix a word once and every printed document changes with it. The list was built to survive past the first semester, and reuse was a design requirement from day one.
How the scores get used
I level students with TOEIC Bridge scores. Vocabulary test results then regroup them into three differentiation tiers, which I call mild, medium, and spicy, inside cooperative groups of four based on Kagan structures.
For the classroom side of this, see the team points system.