Word Nerds: Teaching All Students to Learn and Love Vocabulary (Paperback) - Common

by Brenda J. Overturf

Word Nerds takes you inside classrooms at a high-poverty urban school and shows how two teachers implement creative, flexible vocabulary instruction that improves their students' word knowledge and confidence, enhances classroom community, and increases achievement. Leslie Montgomery and Margot Holmes Smith weave vocabulary into each school day using multisensory instruction that includes music, art, literature, movement, games, drama, writing, test-taking skills, and technology. Along the way, they turn every student into a lover of language.

With support from literacy specialist Brenda Overturf, Leslie and Margot have developed a five-part plan—introducing new words in context, adding related synonyms and antonyms, engaging students in several days of active learning, celebrating new words, and assessing vocabulary development—that teaches all students to learn and love vocabulary.

This easy-to-read reference explains how to plan, teach, and assess based on the latest research in vocabulary instruction and learning. Forget copying definitions from the dictionary and completing boring worksheets! Word mastery comes from intimate knowledge of language. From prediction to practice to performance, students from all backgrounds can discover how to make words their own. After incorporating Leslie's and Margot's vocabulary plan into your daily instruction, you and your students can become word nerds, too!

Genres: Education, Teaching, Professional Development, Nonfiction, School, Teachers

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Shannon Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now this is an AWESOME book about strategic vocabulary instruction. Not only does it offer strategies for teaching vocabulary, but it also gives you a 5 day plan and 10 day plan that you could follow if you wanted. Another practical PD book that I'm in love with.

[Heather Dobnick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Modeled my whole vocabulary instruction using the concepts from this book!!

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best teacher-books I've read in the past couple of years. About teaching vocabulary in a way that is culturally relevant and engaging. I found this book easy to read and filled with applicable ideas. Krissy (EL co-teacher extraordinaire) and I have implemented two rounds of this already with cloze sentences, Frayer models, words games, and assessments, and have been shocked by the success of it. We have had so many kids begging to do these activities again. I'm very impressed with this and excited to see where this program/philosophy takes us!

[Elisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic book that covers both the research behind the need for vocabulary instruction as well as a plan for implementing daily rich vocabulary instruction in the classroom.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It had a lot of good strategies, routines, and games to practice vocabulary with your students. I liked that the authors separated primary and intermediate activities sometimes, as it can be hard to see how an activity that works in 3rd grade will work in a 5th grade classroom. While definitely geared towards teachers in high poverty schools, it is accessible and relevant to all elementary teachers.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

The authors give many examples of a 3rd grade classroom and describe this age group of students as “primary.” I teach k-1 ESL and found that some of the “primary” activities listed in the book are not appropriate for my k-1 students. Although I did learn some new ways to teach and assess vocabulary, I would recommend this book more for intermediate elementary and middle school teachers.

[Jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent Strategies

Excellent strategies for making vocabulary instruction more meaningful to all students, especially does limited background knowledge and experience. A quick read, but full of practical ideas for instruction.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the strategies provided in the book to increase student vocabulary. The authors share a systematic plan for vocabulary instruction that encourages active learning.

[Kristi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic resource for teaching vocabulary. The book has practical and easy to implement strategies to successfully develop a passion for vocabulary.

[Turquoise Brennan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this as a book study with colleagues so it was good to hash out some new ideas and make twists to old ones. A little dated in some research but the emphasis on student talk was important.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a great book. Of course most of what is discussed is hard to implement in an already tight schedule but it gives a lot of great ideas. I'm excited to try to see how to incorporate at least a few of the games and ideas for teaching vocabulary even if I am unable to do the whole vocabulary program. I read these kinds of books and think wow, they must have had to really impress their administration to change their allotted time for subjects to fit in what must be 45 min -1 hr of vocab a day. I love the idea of getting kids so excited about words and meanings and socializing to better understand them as well as moving around the room. Really inspiring book even if it's very hard to implement as is in most places.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Low vocabulary is tied to low-income families. Hart and Risley wrote about a "30-million word gap between professional families and economically disadvantaged families." This book takes vocabulary instruction to a new level by introducing words, practicing words, and making link between words highlighting synonyms, antonyms, morphology, examples, and non examples. They also use an interesting cloze evaluation tool similar to the MAZE in Dibels.

[Teri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really great resource for vocabulary instruction. I felt like chapter 5 was the most useful. Some of the book was a lot of background teacher stories. I wouldn't have minded the information to be a little more direct, therefore shortening the book a bit. I bought the Kindle edition because it was much less than the paper book, but there are a lot of reproducibles that would be good to be able to copy.

[Chelsea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has a lot of great ideas and information to help make vocabulary instruction much stronger in the classroom. I am excited to try some of these ideas in my classroom. I believe they will help the students with retention of vocabulary words as well understanding the definition and use of the word.

[Marysue Gulick · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is very motivating to try new things with teaching vocabulary. But. The ideas are VERY teacher intensive. VERY. I thought after the first round it would get easier. Nope. I was working harder than my students. On to try something else!

[Dr. Raye of Sunshine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. Easy to follow suggestions and guidelines for helping turn your students into "word nerds" too. This is definitely a book that will live on my desk at school.

[Christopher Lehman]

Lots of really practical vocabulary activities. I especially appreciate the opening that discusses and frames the book around research of vocabulary instruction. Nicely done.

[Shelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great research and ideas.

[Stacie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of great ideas to implement vocabulary!

[Cassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book includes some really good resources

[Joy]

Some good ideas so far.

[Jill Arnold-phillips]

Good ideas, working on implementing in my classroom!