Transition words can act like road signs for the reader — by providing indications of what is to come in the phrase, sentence, or paragraph. This week's worksheet asks students to explore the meanings and uses of some common transition words on The Visual Thesaurus and to then categorize those transition words according to the roles they play in context.  Continue reading...

The suffix -ify means "to make," and you will commonly find it forming the ending of some tricky transitive verbs (e.g., petrify: to make into stone; rectify: to make right). Using this week's worksheet, teachers can have students look up some -ify verbs in the Visual Thesaurus, learn their definitions, and then write original sentence for each verb by using a sentence frame as their guide.  Continue reading...

The truth is no one really knows when the great bard was born, but Shakespeare's fans celebrate his life and work this week: his observed birthday of April 23rd is also, ironically, the date of his death. Join us in paying homage to Shakespeare this week by using the Visual Thesaurus to get to the heart of some of his more famous puns.  Continue reading...

The opening of the 2012 baseball season is just around the corner. Teachers, what better way to prepare your students for the season than to give them a little baseball vocabulary preview? Every sport has its own vocabulary, and baseball is no exception.  Continue reading...

Teachers, your students will certainly recognize the words featured on this week's worksheet, but they may be surprised by how they are being used. For example, if they are accustomed to thinking of a skirt as a clothing item, they may be skirting its other meaning as a verb that means "to avoid" (check out the green verb meaning bubbles on skirt's Visual Thesaurus word map).  Continue reading...

In this week's worksheet, we celebrate George Washington's birthday with a Word Sort that helps students brush up on their parts of speech and some vocabulary associated with the holiday.  Continue reading...

If you see a word that ends in the suffix -ism, you can be sure it's a noun. But if you are thinking of a noun as a "person, place or thing" and you consider "a thing" as a tangible object, then think again. A word ending in -ism usually represents something more abstract -- like an idea, theory, or doctrine. Use this week's worksheet to introduce students to some words ending in -ism that represent political beliefs.  Continue reading...