Intended to help students improve their vocabulary and spelling skills, this booklet offers activities on synonyms, antonyms, homonyms (including homophones and homographs), and acronyms. It is suggested that the teacher present these types of words as members of the "Nym Family." Ideas for posters and books to be used as instructional…

The influence of the number of pictures in college textbooks on students' understanding of the text was studied. For six history texts, the numbers of pages, maps, and pictures were compared. Charts, graphs, and diagrams of processes were not counted. While the number of pages and the number of maps in these books have not changed significantly,…

A social studies framework for grades K-12 contains six sections. Seven social studies goals and their components are presented on the inside covers of the volume. An introduction describes the K-12 program rationale. A section on scope and sequence is divided into subsections for each grade level. For each grade level, a brief entry presents…

An alternative to readability formulas and achievement tests to let high school students read orally and then recount what they read. Vocabulary scores and oral reading rates were demonstrated as the best predictors of test performance with a minimum oral reading rate of 135 words per minute necessary to profit from textbooks. (Author/DB)

Presents exercises in the history of names, the origins of certain words, context clues, and creative descriptions--all designed to expand students' vocabularies. (SJL)

Outlines procedures by which teachers can foster and speed up student vocabulary growth. Discusses three aspects of categorization: word fluency, the list-group-label lesson, and feature analysis. (RL)

Provides six propositions concerning the use of vocabulary in business writing. Suggests practical exercises for teaching these propositions to business students. (RL)

Shows how one teacher develops student vocabulary and spelling skills as part of the writing process. (RL)

Designed to grade children's knowledge of commonly used instructional terms in a particular language arts program, the AIT consists of a verbal part and a situational part. Each part assesses the same commonly used instructional terms: word, begin, letter, name, makes sense, beginning sounds, print, trace, capital letter, rhyme, period, stands…

Stressing that building vocabulary knowledge is a continuously developing skill, acquired over a lifetime and in a variety of ways, this concept paper suggests instructional strategies that lead to word knowledge. Following a research summary and a section on implications for instructions, the paper focuses on the various instructional strategies…

Offers exercises for teaching basic writing students how to use derivational suffixes. (RL)

This article reports the results of a preliminary study that applied a randomized posttest-only design to evaluate the effectiveness of a literacy curriculum that incorporated explicit opportunities for Spanish-speaking Head Start preschool children (N = 76) to develop writing abilities in English. The study also addressed English language…

Arguing that researchers in the last decade have helped to illuminate a direction for effective vocabulary development for students, this monograph reviews the recent research on vocabulary knowledge. After a discussion of the importance of vocabulary knowledge, the monograph examines the various factors in vocabulary acquisition identified by…

Intended for elementary school teachers, researchers, and materials developers, this book presents a cluster approach to vocabulary instruction, in which words are taught in semantically related groups. Over 7,000 words from elementary school textbooks have been organized into 61 instructional clusters, each containing two levels of subclusters…

Based on the best available research, this publication describes the most effective methods of vocabulary instruction for the improvement of reading comprehension. Examples of useful approaches to vocabulary instruction aimed at students past the initial stages of reading are presented for use or adaptation by classroom teachers. The publication's…