How to Teach and Learn Precise Vocabulary
Despite all of our educational focus these days on higher order critical thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (Bloom, Costa, etc.), the bulk of our teaching and learning at all...
View ArticleTop 40 Pronunciation Pet Peeves
President George Bush, well known for his pronunciation gaffes, once said, “I have been known to mangle a syllable or two myself.” Despite laughing at the plethora of Bushisms over the last eight...
View ArticleHow to Teach Syllabication: The Syllable Rules
As beginning readers begin to recognize the connection between speech sounds and letters (phonemic awareness), use the alphabetic code to begin sounding out and blending letter sounds (phonics), and...
View ArticleTwenty Advanced Syllable Rules
The Twenty Advanced Syllable Rules are critical to accurate pronunciation, decoding, and spelling. Knowing the patterns of affixes and roots will also facilitate vocabulary acquisition. Syllable Rule...
View ArticleTen English Accent Rules
The Ten English Accent Rules are important to understand and apply to be able to correctly pronounce and spell English words. Accent Rule #1: Each word with two or more syllables has one syllable whose...
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Why Vocabulary Word Lists Don’t Work
Most of us would agree with reading researchers that vocabulary development is critically important to improving reading comprehension (e.g., Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Baumann, Kame‘enui, &...
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Teaching Reading Strategies and RtI
To understand how the Teaching Reading Strategies reading intervention program aligns with the Response to Intervention (RtI) model, a brief orientation to the educational alphabetic jargon may be...
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Research-Based Vocabulary Worksheets
The two most often-used methods of vocabulary instruction include passing out a vocabulary list to be memorized for the Friday quiz and pre-teaching a few vocabulary words prior to reading. Each method...
View ArticleCommon Core Vocabulary
One quick glance at the Vocabulary Standards (see below) will convince most teachers that the traditional method of vocabulary instruction in our schools: pre-teaching a few challenging words before...
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How to Teach Greek and Latin Word Parts Vocabulary
How to Teach Greek and Latin Word Parts Earlier in my teaching career I taught SAT/ACT preparation courses on the side. No, not the math. In checking out all of the SAT prep books I found page after...
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How to Teach Academic Language Vocabulary
How to Teach Academic Language It’s been a while (2009) since I’ve read the carefully-crafted Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards. Not light bedtime reading, but reading is the subject of...
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How to Teach Word Relationships Vocabulary
How to Teach Word Relationships In Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards, the authors discuss the importance of learning new vocabulary in the context of word relationships. To deeply...
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How to Teach Connotations: Shades of Meaning Vocabulary
How to Teach Connotations Shades of Meaning Some of our English words are quite imprecise. Whereas the Greeks have at least four words for love, we only have one. How crazy is it that we can say, “I...
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How to Teach Figures of Speech Vocabulary
How to Teach Figures of Speech “Walk through the door and into my room. Chill in your seat until I can take care of this business. I swear I feel like I’m casting all my pearls before swine,” said the...
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How to Teach Multiple Meaning Words Vocabulary
How to Teach Multiple Meaning Words From an old vaudeville act: “You drove me to drink!” her husband shouted. “No, you walked there yourself every night,” his wife responded. This mildly humorous...
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