I think teaching vocabulary should focus on two approaches: prioritising particularly valuable vocabulary and teaching children the underlying morphology and etymology of written English so that kids can increasingly work out words for themselves...

To prioritise certain vocabulary, I think the approach of going for tier two words is a solid idea. In this blog I explain how I used various word lists (academic word lists, lists of most common written & spoken words on English) to create a list potentially suitable for a...

...primary context: https://primarycolour.home.blog/2019/06/14/tier-two-vocabulary-for-primary-teachers-the-3-4-5-list/