Customer Reviews

America's Spelling & Reading with Riggs: A Basic Spelling and Usage Dictionary

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This is an exellent dictionary to use with children from grades first through fourth. Word print size has been increased to allow comfortable reading by young readers. Definitions are to the point, and words are used in sentences to give meaning. Perfect first dictionary.

I love to use my Rigg's dictionary my grandma gave me. I can look up the words I need to know by myself. When I find the word it is printed and written in cursive. My Rigg's dictionary also uses the word in a sentence so I understand what it means. I love to color in the pictures, it makes the dictionary mine.

Those who buy this book should be aware of the incredible benefits of a truly useful primary-level dictionary for K - 2 students. For the most part, it is meant to teach children what to do with words after they already know how to pronounce and read them. It is a "usage" book -- like most of those popular in the 30's and 40's when formal grammar was "out" and usage was in. This book teaches children grammar, syntax, vocabulary development, composition skills and ideas for creative writing; its very cute and nostalgic illustrations explain not only nouns but the action of verbs. Word entries show both manuscript printing, cursive writing and syllabication. The book shows inflected forms of verbs and plurals of nouns, something new assessments instruments demand of even primary students. A great tool to expand language for your students and to give them a myriad of possibilities for creative assignments. If they can't think of anything to write about or to branch into further vocabulary study, this will help them and you, the teacher. My children just love to read it, not necessarily to "look up" words. You won't have to dream up all the ideas for them. This book is what those who still believe in complete language arts methods will find extremely useful. It may not be for those who have a very precocious "only child" after Grade 1, but have you visited a Grade 4 classroom lately? A bonus is an explanation of the complete "explicit" phonetics of correct English spelling - yes, nearly the same as the Oxford-Webster collaboration of the 1850's, and it has 29 spelling rules used by the current publisher in their complete language arts program. I learned two "rules" when I was a child, both of which were wrong, so I found this set a real goldmine. This is a classic!

Yes, this book doesn't have a very wide range of words in it.

However, the alphabet bar in the margin, the frame layout, large print, and definitions using a synonymous word or phrase below the index word in an example sentence make it a very comfortable introduction to using a dictionary.

The look-up frame includes the word written in cursive, but I believe that a child learning cursive will already find the vocabulary too limited.

My recommendation: hope for a new edition which will expand what is a very good basic structure.