Hooked On English!: Ready-to-Use Activities for the English Curriculum, Grades 7-12 [Paperback]

Jack Umstatter (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0876284217 | ISBN-13: 978-0876284216 | Publication Date: October 6, 1997 | Edition: 1

This unique and practical resource gives junior and senior high school English teachers 186 stimulating activities that can be used to review and reinforce concepts across the English curriculum in a challenging and entertaining way. The activities have been tested with students of varying abilities and include a variety of crossword puzzles, word jumbles, word searches, magic squares, crypto-quotes, word scrambles, matching columns, fill-ins, and more. The book is organized into seven sections including Composition, Usage, Vocabulary, Mechanics & Wordplay, Composition & Speaking, Literature, and Everyday Language. Also included are complete answer keys that can be copied for student self-checking, and "The Internet Connection", a special appendix giving access to useful sites about authors, lesson plans, literature, writing and research. This is an unparalleled store of stimulating reproducible activities to help your students enjoy English, all ready to use "as it" for homework, tests, extra credit, or any other purpose you wish.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

This unique practical resource gives junior and senior high school English teachers 186 stimulating reproducible activities that can be used at any time to review and reinforce important concepts across the English curriculum in a challenging and entertaining way.

The activities have been tested successfully with students of varying abilities and include an exciting variety of crossword puzzles, word jumbles, wordsearches, magic squares, cryptoquotes, word scrambles, matching columns, fill-ins, and more.

For easy use, all materials are printed in a big 8-1/4" x 11" spiral-bound format that folds flat for photocopying and are organized into the following seven sections:

• Section One offers 30 reproducible activities focusing on parts of speech, phrases and clauses, for example, "A Noun and Its Uses," "Animals and Adverbs," and "The 25 Prepositional Phrases."
• Section Two contains 25 worksheets featuring words that are often confused, irregular verbs, modifiers, punctuation, and agreement, including "Positive... Comparative... Superlative," "Making Them All Agree," and "Active and Passive Voices."
• Section Three gives you 32 ready-to-use activities that expand students' word skills, such as "Six Common Types of Analogies," "Words with Some Smash!" (onomatopoeic words), and "Latin and Greek Stems."
• In Section Four you'll find 24 activities focusing on spelling, homophones, plurals, possessives, punctuation and proofreading, for example, "Have You Ever Had Dessert in the Desert?", "Learning from the Grate Depression," and "British or American?"
• The 29 activities in Section Five cover topics such as sentence construction, transitional words, brainstorming, and speech writing. Examples include "Moving Along with Transitional Words," "Combining Sentences," and "The Style of the Speech."
• Section Six features 23 activities on topics like literary and newspaper terms, literary characters, authors and reading self-assessment, for example, "Literary Terms Crossword," "A Shakespearean Sonnet," and "Are We What We Read?"
• Section Seven provides 23 activities on topics such as eponyms, idioms, expressions, clich?s, and word usage, including "A Herculean Task," "Shake a Leg and Pour Your Heart Out," and "Two on the Aisle" (theater terms).

Also included are complete answer keys, ready to be copied for student self-checking if you wish, and "The Internet Connection," a special appendix giving you access to useful sites about authors, lesson plans, literature, writing, and research.

In short, HOOKED ON ENGLISH! places at your fingertips an unparalleled store of stimulating reproducible activities to help your students learn and enjoy English... all ready to use "as is" for homework, tests, quizzes, extra credit, discussions, cooperative learning, research, or any other purpose you see fit!

About the Author

Jack Umstatter, master English teacher with over 25 years' experience, is a multiple winner of the Teacher of the Year Award. He is the author of Brain Games!, Hooked on English! and other practical teachers resources published by The Center. He lives in Islip, NY.

Product Details

• Paperback: 279 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (October 6, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0876284217
• ISBN-13: 978-0876284216
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,001,710 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars English teaching made easier!, April 22, 2000

By 

Sundown Gulliver (South Korea) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hooked On English!: Ready-to-Use Activities for the English Curriculum, Grades 7-12 (Paperback)

Have you ever needed an extra exercise to help reinforce that grammar concept that you're not quite sure the students got? How about something interesting to introduce a new unit? This book really does have it all. I was quite impressed with the variety of exercises, as well as levels. The students enjoy doing the exercises because there is usually some kind of puzzle to figure out once they have learned the task. The writing exercises really stretch their creativity. As an English teacher, this is an invaluable book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A little too basic, August 30, 2005

By 

J. Wisecup "NM teacher" (Alamogordo, NM) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hooked On English!: Ready-to-Use Activities for the English Curriculum, Grades 7-12 (Paperback)

I bought this book nine years ago, when I was a second-year teacher looking for teaching/learning activities that would enhance my students' learning in ninth grade English. Unfortunately, I finally had to give my copy to a special education teacher, because it was too basic for my ninth graders, year after year. The activities rarely took over two minutes. A cost/benefit analysis resulted in my opinion that the cost of reproducing the activities overwhelmed the limited benefit my students would get out of it (basically, an easy A paper). I think this book would be better targeted toward the upper elementary grades, rather than 7-12.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It made me "Hooked on English!", July 28, 2005

By 

Mrs. B "loves English" (Whittier, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hooked On English!: Ready-to-Use Activities for the English Curriculum, Grades 7-12 (Paperback)

I liked this book so much that when I found out I was not going to be an English teacher anymore and was going to teach math, I still kept the book because it looked like fun to me! The pages are easy to understand and they have a lot of information in fun ways of learning. I think that students would really enjoy this format for learning English.