It's that time again, the annual look back at the noteworthy words of the year. Were you worried about dangling over the fiscal cliff, or did you have more of a devil-may-care YOLO attitude? Were you more interested in mansplaining or hate-watching? Here's a roundup of words that's not just a bunch of malarkey.  Continue reading...

For the holiday season, vocabulary expert Susan Ebbers discusses several interesting differences between happy and merry, providing applications and lesson suggestions for grades K-12.  Continue reading...

I sometimes find myself getting bored when I write... This is not the end of the world, but it's not very pleasant, either. And if we're bored as writers, think about how our poor readers are going to feel!  Continue reading...

In this excerpt from Vocabulary Strategies That Work — Do This, Not That!, Kent State professor of education Lori G. Wilfong brings a visualization strategy called "Sketch to Stretch" to vocabulary study.  Continue reading...

Recently I was in a meeting about computer security where the presenter concluded an explanation with "…basically, it's an example of the Confused Deputy problem." For me, the term confused deputy vividly invoked a kind of genial befuddlement that might indeed result in a security problem.  Continue reading...

Which brand was most emblematic of the year that's now ending? Facebook, which had a much-ballyhooed initial stock offering in May? Apple, which said in December it would start making some products in the United States instead of in China? Neiman Marcus and Target, which formed an unlikely high-low partnership to sell holiday gifts to two very different audiences?  Continue reading...

Use this week's worksheet to give young students an opportunity to explore antonyms in the Visual Thesaurus. Antonyms, pairs of words expressing opposite concepts, are connected by dashed red lines in Visual Thesaurus word maps. Using the VT, students will find antonyms for eleven adjectives and then unscramble some mysterious letters to solve a puzzle. Click here for the worksheet and here for a related lesson plan, "It's Opposite Day."  Continue reading...