The purpose of this teaching tip is to share a new tool for identifying high-utility academic words from instructional texts. The Word and Phrase Tool, when paired with teacher knowledge about students and objectives, can help teachers promote the academic vocabulary development of their students.

Word sorts are standard practice for aiding children in acquiring skills in English language arts. When included in the general music classroom, word sorts may aid students in acquiring a working knowledge of music vocabulary. The author shares a word sort activity drawn from vocabulary in John Lithgow's children's book "Never Play…

This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. This month's issue discusses planning and using interactive word walls to support science and reading instruction. Many classrooms have word walls displaying vocabulary that students have learned in class. Word walls serve as visual scaffolds to support instruction. To…

Giving additional learning materials such as Chinese fantasy novel to non-native learners can be strenuous. This study seeks to render empirical support on the usefulness of the use of new words in Chinese fantasy novel to enhance vocabulary learning among the non-native learners of Chinese. In general, the students agreed that they like to learn…

Making spelling instruction effective, fun, practical, and meaningful is a challenge faced by many teachers. Spelling is traditionally taught with prepackaged word lists using a test-practice-test method, which results in little transfer to independent word use. Because spelling is an important component and gauge of literacy skills, students need…

It is common to see word walls displaying the vocabulary that students have learned in class. Word walls serve as visual scaffolds and are a classroom strategy used to reinforce reading and language arts instruction. Research shows a strong relationship between student word knowledge and academic achievement (Stahl and Fairbanks 1986). As a…

Children with spelling difficulties are limited in their participation in all written school activities. We aimed to investigate the influence of word-prediction as a tool on spelling accuracy and typing speed. To this end, we selected 80 Grade 4-6 children with spelling difficulties in a school for special needs to participate in a research…

Vocabulary words frequently used in the media and popular literature can be taught by using a modified foreign language laboratory method whereby the students are introduced to the words aurally. First the students are read a concocted paragraph that incorporates the new vocabulary. This is followed by repetition in which the paragraph or dialogue…

Presents guidelines for teaching spelling, focusing on the issue of whether spelling instruction should be formal or informal, the use of word lists, efficient instructional procedures, effective methods for studying words, the need for systematic improvement of retention, and integration of spelling and writing. (RAE)

Studies context as a significant aid to the learning and retention of words. (RB)

Presents a method for teaching vocabulary in the language class that is based on etymology and association. Word lists and sample materials for French are appended. (AM)

Describes the Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy, a strategy that differs from traditional instruction through its use of student generated word lists and its emphasis on students' personal experience and world knowledge. (HOD)

A study is described in this paper that was conducted to determine the frequency and percentage of words containing Latin prefixes and roots in the "Harris Jacobson Core List" (Basic Elementary Reading Vocabularies, 1972). The results of the study indicate that the percentage of words containing Latin prefixes and roots increases…