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Success Stories
Connecticut's Dodd Middle School Sees "Unbelievable Success" in Student Scores
School sees rapid progress on standardized tests and shoots up the Vocabulary Bowl leaderboard.
When Dodd Middle School in Cheshire, Connecticut wanted to raise scores on a test that judges students' reading comprehension, they turned to Vocabulary.com for help. Their subsequent success was, in the words of one language arts teacher, "unbelievable."
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Success Stories
Zanesville High School Focuses on Vocabulary to Close the Achievement Gap
Teachers say the "more nuanced" and "in depth" approach is already paying off.
Follow the story of an Ohio high school addressing reading deficits behind the achievement gap with a targeted vocab intervention using Vocabulary.com. Students are having fun with the game and teachers love the progress they are making.
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Dept. of Word Lists
What Makes Vocabulary "Presidential"?
Celebrate Presidents' Day by looking at how presidents use words.
Teachers, commemorate Presidents' Day this year by looking through some of the great lists we have to explore the vocabulary choices made by presidents throughout history. These lists can bring your students closer to the words that shape current events or times gone by.
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Tips & Tricks
Turn Any Current Event into a Word Learning Event
Use VocabGrabber to transform news articles into vocab-based current events mini lessons.
Teachers: How many times does this happen? You pass out copies of an engaging news story, assign your students to read it for homework, and then lead a spirited 10-minute discussion of the article at the beginning of class the next day. If your answer is "Not often enough," you are not alone.
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Blog Excerpts
When "Banishing Boring Words," Avoid "Synonym-itis"
Before declaring words to be "dead," make sure students know what livelier alternatives mean.
Following a Wall Street Journal article poking gentle fun at a movement to strike overused words such as good, bad, and nice from student writing, Slate Senior Editor Gabriel Roth warned that a "reasonable pedagogical technique" had morphed into "perverse and deadly totalitarianism." For middle school English teachers, we suggest some middle ground.
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Announcements
Never Hear "I Didn't Know There was Vocab Homework" Again!
Teachers: stay organized with our new assign-this-list feature.
Teachers: We've just added a built-in assignment tool to make it even easier to assign vocabulary lists for your students to practice. This functionality should come as a welcome addition to teachers--we added it based on your feedback and expect it to be a game changer for anyone teaching word learning using vocabulary.com.
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Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
How Did an Eighth Grader Master 5000+ Words in a Single School Year?
By finding the "extraordinary" within.
Going into the Vocabulary Bowl last year, no one could have predicted how seriously Obehi Obano would take word learning. A typical eighth grader, Obehi had to work extra hard in math to make the honor roll, and listed among her favorite activities hanging out with her friends, watching "Full House," and going to the beach. But, when it came to vocabulary, "typical" Obehi was not. After she got hooked on the game, she mastered more than 5,000 words during the school year. That's more than 600 words per month, 150 per week, and an impressive 20 per day.
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