6/08/04

Making Word Web Vocabulary the center of Language Arts

No teacher wants to add a new subject to an already crowded curriculum. Knowing this, I have created Word Web Vocabulary so that it becomes the forum for introducing and reinforcing many elements of your English / language arts program, a tool to help you meet your state-mandated English standards, and the center of your language arts program.

I created this while working out how to accomplish all this in my own classroom. How could I possibly cover spelling, grammar (and its numerous ramifications), the many mechanics of writing, figures of speech, as well as reading and a well-rounded vocabulary?

After a great deal of pondering, I decided to capitalize on my students’ enjoyment of vocabulary. Since sentence writing was part of my modus operandi for their learning new words, I began requiring them to include in those same sentences the current week’s spelling words along with spelling demons I had written on the board. From there, it wasn’t much of a stretch to have students include other of the components I mention above in these sentences. Some of these essential elements came from lessons we’d covered earlier in the year. Continuous review is an important aspect of all learning.

Students liked the challenge and the diversity each week brought. In order to help teachers accomplish this “killing-two-birds-with-one-stone” approach, I include reminders on most pages in the teacher’s manual such as those below, starting with Volume III*. I suggest that each week you assign two or three of these components for students to incorporate into their written work.

• Review and assign conventions of punctuation and capitalization.
• Are your students writing complete sentences when answering Think Links?
• Are your students correcting spelling and mechanical errors in their sentences?
• Remind students to use their vocabulary words when fulfilling other writing assignments.
• Are your students able to apply current vocabulary words to literature that they are reading or read earlier in the year?
• Remember to choose some Think Links for research-and-write assignments.
• Watch out for dangling phrases in students’ writing when you require them to use various types of introductory clauses.
• You can reinforce the correct punctuation of dialog by requiring that a specific number of students’ sentences contain dialog.
• Are you requiring students to use similes, metaphors and personification (once they are familiar with these figures of speech) when writing their sentences?
• Constantly strive to expand your students’ horizons through the examples you choose to illustrate a word.
• Are you showing your students how prefixes can help them understand the spelling of some words?
• Are your students using spelling demons in their sentence writing?
• As students show mastery of their grade’s spelling demons, give them more advanced ones.
• Are you reinforcing, through students’ sentence writing, the four basic sentence types with their correct punctuation?
• Remember to evaluate the usefulness and credibility of students’ data and sources.

To make it easier for teachers to plan the incorporation of all these elements, I include in the Teacher’s Introduction a 2-page concise guide to the grammar, mechanics and punctuation of English writing, along with a year’s worth of language arts lesson planning broken into the six chapters of each Word Web Vocabulary workbook.*

*This material will be on Word Web’s website as a free PDF before the fall opening of school, so please download a copy and use it to make your lesson planning easier!

Word Web Vocabulary, moving vocabulary from the edge of the language arts curriculum to the center — and featured on Heidi Hayes-Jacobs’ website