Dynamic Literacy’s WordBuild: A Review

I love the study of words. Words are the building blocks of communication, and the more of them you know, the more likely it is that you will be a good writer and speaker. In addition, words are just plain fascinating!

For many years, I used and recommended vocabulary programs based in Latin and Greek roots, and I still like those programs. I realize that roots-based programs seem inaccessible to some people, so I’ve found an alternate program that’s amazingly user-friendly, highly effective, and fun. It’s WordBuild: A Better Way to Teach Vocabulary, and the entire program is contained in two comprehensive levels. WordBuild is “based on morphology, the study of the units of meaning in words. Just as phonology is the study of the sounds that make up words, morphology is the study of the meaningful pieces of words. A mastery of phonics helps students “sound out” unfamiliar words; a mastery of morphics helps students “mean out” unfamiliar words.” Read more

Celebrate National Punctuation Day!

Okay, students, put on your party hats! It’s time to celebrate the not-so-lowly punctuation mark. We’re a little late to join the baking contest planned as part of the celebration, but there nothing stopping us from using commas, periods, apostrophes, and semi-colons to our hearts content. Choose your favorite punctuation mark and make merry!

Imagine a worldundefinedwithout punctuation a world in which wed have to guess at meanings and try to read smoothly without the aid of those handy little signals imagine how silly wed sound stumbling through Dickens or trying to skim through Hamlets soliloquy to be or not to be that is the question whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them to die to sleep no more and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to making sense of that without punctuation could be quite a nightmare especially for 10th graders if they are allowed to read Shakespeare anymore

Jeff Rubin, the founder of National Punctuation Day offers tongue-in-cheek suggestions for how to celebrate the holiday, including:

Rubin has graciously provided a page of horrifyingly funny pictures of errors spotted in public places (and instructions for how you can submit your own photos) . TIP: If you don’t find all the photos on this page hilarious, find a grammatically-correct friend to explain the joke. They’re too funny to miss!

P.S. The fact that I find these common errors funny doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally overlook things in my own writing. It also doesn’t mean that I check incoming e-mails for typos. I’m not perfect, and I don’t expect you to be. I’m always writing under deadline, and I expect that you are too, so don’t worry about having your comments or e-mails perfectly proofread. I don’t have the time or inclination. I just like to hear from you–with or without typos!

Motivation: What Gets People Moving?

Before you start school this year, you may want to consider motivation. What is the most effective way to encourage your children to study and learn?

Some of us (ahem–me, anyway) respond well to doing things I find intrinsically interesting, but can coerce myself into doing tedious stuff (balancing checkbooks, anyone?) by the promise of a hot-fudge sundae at the end. Not sure about the quality of work! My boys sometimes did hard stuff just because they were interested, but balked at what I thought was easy and quick. Daniel Pink’s video talk for TED is an interesting look at some detailed studies on motivation and the effect of rewards. Very interesting!