Bringing Words to Life has enlivened the classrooms of hundreds of thousands of teachers. Responding to readers' success stories, practical questions, and requests for extended examples, this ideal volume builds on the groundbreaking work of Bringing Words to Life . The authors present additional tools, tips, and detailed explanations of such questions as which words to teach, when and how to teach them, and how to adapt instruction for English language learners. They provide specific instructional sequences, including assessments, for grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12, as well as interactive lesson planning resources. Invaluable appendices feature engaging classroom activities and a comprehensive list of children's books and stories with suggested vocabulary for study.
See also the authors' Bringing Words to Life, Second Robust Vocabulary Instruction , the authoritative guide to research-based vocabulary instruction, as well as Making Sense of Phonics, Second The Hows and Whys , by Isabel L. Beck and Mark E. Beck, an invaluable resource for K-3.
Beck, Mckeown, and Kucan provide extremely useful ideas to use in and out of the classroom to directly improve vocabulary and ultimately improve comprehension. As a junior high librarian, it helped me design a school wide program that all teachers can participate in, which should help our school reading scores, which many of us are evaluated on.
I think the authors are pretty stuck-up. They seem to think that their ideas are the best ideas ever and that nobody else's ideas are valid. I wouldn't have continued to read this book if I wasn't involved in a book study. I did like the side stories of examples of students using robust vocabulary.
I finally finished this for a book study and realized that I'm already using the (few) strategies applicable to a high school classroom. This may be a good guide for an elementary or ESL teacher but this high school instructor found it a tough slog.