The Word-Conscious Classroom: Building the Vocabulary Readers and Writers Need

by Judith Scott, Bonnie Skobel, Jan Wells

Want to guarantee that students are learning rich vocabulary all day, everyday—and, by doing this, improving their reading and writing? In this lively, research-based book, based on successful classroom practice, the authors offer dozens of strategies, mini-lessons, units , and activities that increase students' exposure to and appreciation of sophisticated language.A sampling of the vocabulary-focused strategies and tools include:

• Using daily read alouds and think alouds during shared reading to gather powerful language from literature

• Organizing literature circles with one student serving as the “word hunter”

• Engaging in whole class and small group lively games such as gift of words bingo and ricochet

• Using mentor texts as models for writing class books

• Appointing all students to be “word catchers” and “word coaches” for each other

• Establishing a classroom community where it is considered normal to ask about word meanings and experimenting with language

• Collecting and displaying words in the “Bank of Powerful Language”

• Offering rubrics for word learning assessment

In addition, the authors offer lively ways to enhance word consciousness by linking reading and writing through step-by-step units on poetry, memoir, stories, and research writing. For use with Grades 4-8.

Genres: Education

192 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2008

Reviews

[Anitra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is fantastic and it inspired me to build an entire podcast on the topic. We take for granted our students word learning strategies and word knowledge. This book helped me to reconcile my vocabulary instruction with my ability to build word consciousness in all of the academic areas. I highly recommend it and there is a free pdf version online.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone just starting out in the schools, as well as being someone who works on vocabulary often with kids, I really liked this book. I thought it had some great ideas to implement with my kids next year, including ways to make my sessions with students more curriculum based. I also really appreciated that it focused on overall vocabulary development in the context of making reading and writing really enjoyable for kids, and teaching them how to be critical readers. I should caveat this review with the fact that I really just skimmed this book to see if its something I would want to purchase - which I do!