It would be difficult to overstate the importance of academic vocabulary to our students’ success in reading, the content areas, and beyond. In Reading, Writing and Learning in ESL (2005), Suzanne Peregoy and Owen Boyle frame it this way: What we know in any content area is distilled in the vocabulary we own in that subject. In other words, our academic vocabulary, the words we control, manipulate, and communicate with, reflect the content we know at the conceptual level. For all of our ELs, but most especially those who enter the country in middle or high school, academic vocabulary acquisition is a...
Read More Post a comment (0)We just received word that Benchmark Education won two 2012 Teacher's Choice Awards for Classic Tales and Word Study & Vocabulary Skill Bags! Hats off to the many passionate and dedicated folks responsible for making Benchmark Education a publisher of premium quality educational resources. What a great way to start the new school year!
VOCABULARY, vocabulary, when will I teach it? Maybe while I’m reading to the students? Research says that some vocabulary words are learned indirectly, and others can be taught directly. We’re going to discuss the latter. Read-aloud is a wonderful time for you and your students because it provides the perfect opportunity to teach words directly. Many of you are doing this already. However, new teachers or teachers changing grade levels might find this refresher helpful. Let’s prepare for read-aloud! First of all, you need GREAT books--not just any book will do. When you select GREAT books for instruction, you need to think...
Read More Post a comment (0)Do you know what the top NEW Elementary Intervention program is? If you answered, Benchmark Education's Word Study & Vocabulary Skill Bags, you're right! We're proud to announce that Benchmark Education's Word Study & Vocabulary Skill Bags won the AEP 2011 Distinguished Achievement Award for Best Elementary Level Intervention product! These Word Study & Vocabulary Skill Bags make teaching word analysis strategies effective and easy. Each kit provides everything educators need to assess, target skills and differentiate instruction. They're perfect for Grades 3-8+ classroom use or tiered intervention. Have you used our skill bags? We'd love to hear your thoughts.
It’s one thing to be able to read clearly, persuasively, and with feeling, but it’s quite another to write that way. We all know that reading well (and often) typically makes someone a better writer, but now there is quite a bit of research to show that the converse is also true. Writing ability also improves reading ability. Yet two big debates swirl around writing in the classroom: What should kids write about? How should teachers evaluate them? Today, we are going to discuss the former. When focusing on writing in the classroom, there are so many different genres that students can tackle...
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