Customer Reviews

Words, Words, Words: Teaching Vocabulary in Grades 4-12

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Janet Allen has done a terrific job of blending theory with practice. Taking the last twenty years of research on vocabulary, Allen synthesizes the major guiding principles and illustrates a variety of strategies for helping students to acquire and develop vocabulary. As always, Allen writes in a clear, reader-friendly, no-nonsense style--a refreshing change from many of the language arts books in the field. As a reading specialist for the past twenty years, I highly recommend her new book.

Regardless if you are teaching elementary school or middle school, you have students in your classroom who are poor readers and writers. Janet Allen's book -- all of them, for that matter -- are comprehensive guides to providing tips and strategies on how to assist them to "own their learning." So many pages of this book are folded down, as a means to remind me to use the strategy in my own classroom. Her book recommendations are also very handy, especially when you want to model different instructional strategies on learning new vocabulary while reading.

I can't say enough about this book and the rest of Allen's books without sounding like I am repeating myself. As an educator, I value good books that help me to become a better teacher -- this is such a book. You will not be disappointed.

An excellent resource for all teachers. There are lots of ideas to help activate students background knowledge. There are ideas to teach context clues, words walls, prefixes, suffixes, and roots.

My favorite section was an idea on how to use alphabet books with older students. I plan to incorporate this lesson in my classroom.

All teachers should buy this book. This is also a great book for a professional book study.

This is a great book that explains how students learn new words and build their vocabulary. It gives you strategies that will allow students to hold onto what they learn and begin to use new vocabulary in their everyday language. Excellent for professional development.

Full disclosure: I think Janet Allen is a genius.

I love this book because not only does she spell out all the problems she had when she was teaching; she also tells us all the steps she went through to make her students more successful and why she took them. It was reassuring to know that someone else was going through the same problems I was experiencing and encouraging to know they could be resolved.

Good teacher that she is, Allen includes lots of examples to illustrate her points and several templates in the appendix for us to use too. I appreciated not having to reinvent the wheel.

After reading this book, I tried many of her suggestions. They work! The problem is that if you're on a pacing plan like we now are, you may not get the results she does because her method takes time, as all good teaching does. But the book is still worthwhile, because she gives you soooo many ideas.

This book and Yellow Brick Roads are essential for any language arts teacher.

This is a must-have for teaching vocabulary in grades 4-12! It includes teaching theory, classroom activities, games, and about 20 pages of reproducible pages for student use.

I purchased the book for my husband. He is a High School English/Journalism teacher. He really wanted to have it on hand for school.

I am a home school educator and this did not work out for us. I'm selling my copy if anyone is interested.