9/6/06

Importance of Teacher’s Guide

You’re back in your classroom for school year 2006-07 and undoubtedly facing many challenges: new texts, new guidelines, new students. As the author of Word Web Vocabulary, I wanted to make sure that teachers would not have to do special preparations for any lessons. Although I placed helpful information in each of the 36 lesson, my greatest help for you is in the introduction to your teacher’s manual, starting on the inside front cover with Word Web’s proprietary symbols and going through to the chart which shows the flow of chapter work. Read this introduction so that each vocabulary lesson becomes clear and easy to follow — and refer to it any time you’re not sure what you should do. From questions sent me, I recognize that one quick read-through is not enough for any teacher.

Please pay particular attention to the chart that helps you check off your state’s/school’s standards-based requirements as you incorporate them into your students’ lessons. Study and return often to the check-list for each chapter of the book reminding you how Word Web enables you to apply and reinforce the many facets of the language arts. This material will help you utilize Word Web’s various components. It will also save you time and allow you to implement the strengths of this program. Finally, a two-page review of the grammar, mechanics and punctuation of English writing serves both as a refresher for you and a reminder of what you expect to see in your students’ writing.

One of my first goals when creating each manual was to make sure that you understood how to both manage and maximize classroom time for the three parts of each week’s lessons. If you are new to Word Web, you will quickly discover the rhythm that flows through each week’s work. Discuss all the words on the web and how they relate to each other, elicit oral sentences from students that utilize these words, share their written work, discuss various answers to Think Links® and the thread of thought that unites Literary Links® to the current lesson. To make sure your students are involved in the learning process, oversee their sentence writing, including Super Sentences®, and efforts at research as well as their contributions to classroom discussions .

Although every lesson follows the same format of those that precede it, each has its own unique elements. In addition to the web words, the two other elements in each lesson expand students’ knowledge of different types of vocabulary. Since many students grasp these more easily than the web words, they’ll meet success with their sentence writing and responses to Think Links. Once they feel mastery of these components, they should be able to apply these successes to the web words’ work.

In a further effort to assure you that you don’t have to look elsewhere, I often expand on information in the students’ books and provide historical backgrounds so that you don’t have to find the necessary supplemental information.

Naturally, I want you succeed and to carry out all the various tasks and suggestions that I make in each volume of Word Web. If you need more help, though, it’s as close as your computer or telephone. Just send me your question, elinormiller@seepub.com and I’ll do my best to give you a useful answer.

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