We here at the Visual Thesaurus have a long-standing commitment to providing tools for teachers who want to get students excited about language. From our award-winning application to our high-quality lesson plans and other online content, we're constantly looking for ways to help educators enliven their classrooms. Now we're bringing all of those resources together on a redesigned educators page, together with some brand-new features.  Continue reading...

A word wall is pretty much what it sounds like — a classroom wall reserved for a word display. Most teachers associate word walls with emergent readers, but word walls are no longer just the stuff of elementary schools. Word walls can be used effectively to help students at all levels to learn vocabulary.  Continue reading...

Teachers from across the country write us about how the Visual Thesaurus helps their students increase reading comprehension. Now a federally funded study is taking a closer look at the connection between the Visual Thesaurus and reading. Developed by researchers at the prestigious Education Development Center, Inc. in Boston, the study is following eighth grade students with learning disabilities who've been introduced to the Visual Thesaurus. Their findings show that the Visual Thesaurus can significantly help students struggling with reading comprehension.  Continue reading...

How can categorizing words from Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief help introduce students to the major themes of the novel?  Continue reading...

Recently, one of my teachers sent me a link to an interview of Larry McMurtry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove, given to Fritz Lanham of the Houston Chronicle. The interview contained Mr. McMurtry's very pessimistic viewpoint that the end of book culture is near.  Continue reading...

Hey, have you guys heard about this crazy new thing lots of teachers are doing? It's a little nuts, so you may want to sit down. I was floored myself when I heard, but lots of language arts teachers are using recently-written literature in their classrooms! Like, literature not written by Hawthorne, Williams or Dickinson. Nuts!  Continue reading...