6/5/06

Making Summer Count

If your duties this summer include looking at curriculum options, I'd like you to consider something that is especially important for you, your teachers and your students.

In a recent mailing that we at Word Web Vocabulary sent to curriculum directors around the country, we emphasized one particular point about this unique program that I believe is worth your serious consideration.

We showed how using Word Web Vocabulary gives students the many benefits of taking Latin and Greek — without actually taking Latin and Greek. No, we’re not trying to confuse you or to use double-speak. In this day and age, when back-to-basics is all the rage in many regions, I'm glad to see that there is again some appreciation for the value of Latin and Greek studies in the pursuit for greater literacy.

I am truly delighted to see this renewed quest for Greek and Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes because these are at the core of Word Web Vocabulary. However, we don’t present these foundations in a manner that requires rote memorization. Students not only learn our words in context, but they remember them because they are expected to use them again and again in future lessons.

Continuous review is the key to most learning but is often overlooked by programs that present a lesson on a root, prefix or suffix, then moves on to the next lesson without reference to those that preceded it.

We also encourage (and sometimes require) students to find these words in any type of periodical publication. This essential activity confers relevancy to classroom studies, as do our use of Word Web’s proprietary graphics and requirements for research and critical thinking. Through these elements, students find our lessons interesting and engaging.

For those of you who would like to jump-start your classroom or school's language arts program, I'll be happy to send you a free examination copy of Word Web. What you will receive is the actual first 6-weeks of one of our volumes, so you can really see how our unique approach works.

After more than 20 years of classroom use and our experience over the past three years with the many schools now using our program, I am convinced that Word Web Vocabulary really does provide significant benefits to students who absorb our Latin and Greek lessons.

That’s my word for this time, Ellie

Word Web Vocabulary - recommended on Heidi Hayes-Jacobs' website - Moving vocabulary from the edge of language arts to its center