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Atlanta Students Win Oodles of Books as Vocabulary Learning Prize
What's the best present to get a group of middle schoolers who have just learned a ton of new words? How about $500 worth of books that, thanks to their improved vocabularies, they'll be more easily able to enjoy and understand?
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Under the HoodThe science of vocabulary building
For SAT Prep, List-Learning Starts With List-Building
An SAT tutor's story about how one motivationally challenged student was able to use list-building — as well as list-learning — to make words' meanings really stick in his brain.
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Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
In Yearlong Vocabulary Bowl, Chavez High School Has Eyes on the Prize
So far this school year, students at Chavez High School in Houston, TX have mastered nearly 200,000 words using Vocabulary.com. They're learning words on their computers, their phones, their tablets, at home, on the bus, during lunch and free periods, and during vocabulary binge-sessions in the cafeteria. Their hard work and persistence has taken their school to the top spot in the yearlong Vocabulary Bowl, and local media is paying attention.
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Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
For Black History Month, Teach #blacklivesmatter
A free lesson plan built around student engagement
In January, the American Dialect Society made history by selecting a hashtag, #blacklivesmatter, as its Word of the Year. The choice inspired composition professors at St. John's University in Queens, Professor Sophie Bell and Professor Amanda Moulder to create a lesson plan around the ADS's #blacklivesmatter selection, bringing attention to race and language in a way that feels relevant to students' lives. To kick off Black History Month, we're sharing the lesson plan they created.
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Topics:
Teaching
We have all seen this tired loop of "instruction": distribute word list, have students look up words, ask students to use the words in original sentences. While encouraging usage is never a bad idea, it's not realistic to expect students to pivot from definition to usage without guidance. We suggest ditching (or at least delaying) the idea of originality and instead asking students to model their sentences on usage examples written by those people who are especially skilled with using words: professional writers.
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Academic Study Proves Vocabulary.com Method Works
Eleventh graders boost engagement and learning in school and at home.
A team of academic literacy researchers put Vocabulary.com to the test in a study of eleventh grade students using Vocabulary.com in classroom and after-school contexts along with other vocabulary-focused digital learning tools. The results, published in the prestigious, peer-reviewed Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, are unequivocal: Vocabulary.com boosts learning by creating a fun, engaging, and competitive experience where students are in control.
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Educators love to talk about how important vocabulary is, but they are often at wits' end trying to figure out how to teach it effectively. Despite the overwhelming evidence that vocabulary knowledge matters to students' reading comprehension and overall achievement in school, it is rare that you will find schools or school districts implementing systematic vocabulary instruction.
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