While teaching roots and affixes may help students make sense of unfamiliar words, supplying students with long lists of "word parts" can sometimes be overwhelming and unproductive. In this excerpt from Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement: Research on What Works in Schools, academic vocabulary expert Robert J. Marzano explains how to focus instruction on those affixes and roots that will give you the most vocab-enriching bang for your buck!  Continue reading...

While many teachers may have their students keep vocabulary logs of the unfamiliar words they encounter in books they are reading or from the world at large, few require students to take the extra steps to ensure a deeper or more meaningful understanding of these words.  Continue reading...

This is a must-read for teachers planning on revamping their vocab instruction! Few educational authors can blend research, theory and practical examples like the vocabulary instruction expert Isabel Beck and her co-authors Margaret G. McKeown and Linda Kucan. This excerpt, from Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction, offers creative ideas about how to motivate "word wizards" of all ages to extend their vocabulary use beyond the classroom walls.  Continue reading...

You can keep your Liz Taylor screaming in her white sundresses, and your bellowing Marlon Brando in an undershirt bellowing outside Stella's window: I think Tennessee William's finest work isn't A Streetcar Named Desire or Suddenly Last Summer, or even Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Genius as they all are, I think his most magical, lyrical play is The Glass Menagerie.  Continue reading...

Teachers all over look to Gerald G. Duffy, EdD, for his expert advice on how to teach reading, and part and parcel of Duffy's reading strategies is his focus on vocabulary. In this excerpt from his best-selling text Explaining Reading, Duffy demonstrates how semantic maps can help students visualize how word meanings can be categorized.  Continue reading...

Writing teacher Margaret Hundley Parker has a simple lesson for her students: Don't learn grammar from rock stars. Here Margaret explains how rock and roll lyrics with non-standard English constructions can often lead students of grammar astray.  Continue reading...