4/27/04

STANDARDS-BASED REQUIREMENTS

Many of you who wish to order classroom sets of Word Web Vocabulary ask me if this program meets your state’s standards-based requirements. Indeed it does! Here’s how:

WORD WEB ASSURES STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY WILL GROW BY:

Using knowledge of Greek, Latin and Anglo-Saxon roots, prefixes and suffixes to understand:

• the relationship of words with common roots, prefixes or suffixes
• complex words
• the meaning of unknown words in science, mathematics and social studies;

Recognizing French, German and Spanish words that are based on the same Greek and Latin roots;

Identifying words that have similar meanings (synonyms) and words that have opposite meanings (antonyms);

Using words from other languages that have been adopted into the English language;

Understanding idioms;

Understanding how our language grows through new pharmaceutical, household and industrial products and newly-coined words;

Connecting students to the world through auto names (Honda Odyssey), sports teams (Denver Nuggets), acronyms (SUNOCO, FYI, NIMBY), architectural features, election terms (lame duck, grass roots)

IN ADDITION, WORD WEB:

Guides teachers to instruct and reinforce the following conventions / concepts in their students’ weekly sentence / paragraph / theme writing:

• sentences (declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory and their respective end marks) that are complete, whether they are simple, complex or compound;
• commas, apostrophes, quotation marks, semicolons, colons, hyphens, dashes, brackets;
• capitalization;
• nouns and pronouns in agreement;
• subjects and verbs in agreement;
• compound subjects, compound verbs
• possessive nouns and pronouns;
• irregular plural nouns: children, women, bacteria, media, data
• parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, prepositions, interjections;
• past, present and future verb tenses of both regular and irregular verbs;
• clauses: introductory (non-dangling), dependent, independent
• phrases: prepositional, gerund, infinitive, participial.

Provides grade-appropriate spelling demons to teachers

Contributes to the overall literacy of students by:

• providing Literary Links and Featured Facts;
• referencing what is considered to be general knowledge

Encourages research through its Think Links and Delve Deeper features, allow ing for classroom discussions and independent work to investigate a topic; guides students to gather information from a variety of sources and to report information to others

Teaches writers to:

use revision strategies to improve the coherence of ideas, clarity of sentence structure and effectiveness of word choices.

edit to improve sentence fluency, grammar and usage.

use correct spelling

use conventions of punctuation and capitalization in written work.

use grammatical structures to effectively communicate ideas in writing.

evaluate the usefulness and credibility of data and sources.

organize information from various resources and select appropriate sources to support central ideas, concepts and themes.

use style guides to produce oral and written reports that give proper credit for sources (e.g., words, ideas, images and information) and include an acceptable format for source acknowledgment.

communicate findings, reporting on the substance and processes orally, visually and in writing or through multimedia.