Vocabulary Ladders: Understanding Word Nuances Level 4

Product Description

Choosing appropriate words to express an idea is important to improve students’ reading comprehension and writing composition skills. Vocabulary Ladders: Understanding Words Nuances provides fourth grade students with fun and engaging vocabulary activities to support word knowledge within reading and writing skills. This resource provides a framework to teach related words using a cluster approach that helps students learn many semantically related words at once. With this series, students will discuss differences between themed words, order words and explain their thinking, use words in context, and use words in writing.

From the Inside Flap

Choosing the right word adds power and richness to a writer’smessage.  Understanding the reason for that choice adds precision anddepth to the reader’s comprehension.  This book provides a uniqueapproach to vocabulary study that supports both writers and readers andoffers several advantages.  First, it sharpens students’ thinking andrefines their sense of the underlying concept.  Second, it encouragesstudents to consider the purposes and circumstances for selectingspecific words so they are used effectively.  Third, it provides thewriter or speaker with a range of words from which to choose from mostappropriately express the meaning he or she intends to convey.

The activities in this book include instructional concepts from theresearch on vocabulary teaching and learning.  They require students toreview and clarify specific word meanings and relate them to appropriate situations.  Students will also have the opportunity to solidify theirlearning by applying word meanings to their personal experiences.

While the materials in these books are tightly organized, and the activitiesare clear and straightforward, the connections among words often arenot.  Word relationships are complex, and there may be severalreasonable interpretations of how words should be arranged along acontinuum.  The word orders in the ladders are not cast in stone.  Manytimes the differences among word meanings are less a matter of degreeand more one of the context or situation.  To be most effective inincreasing the breadth and depth of student vocabularies, teachers mustencourage students to explain their own understanding of the wordmeanings and explain how they are connected and how they may be used,and they must respect these explanations.  It is in the process oftalking about words that learning about them is best advanced.  Thus,the ladders should not be seen as the end points to be memorized, but as starting points for discussion, debate, and discovery.

-Jerry Zutell

Professor Emeritus
The Ohio State University

From the Back Cover

Choosing appropriate words to express an idea is important toimprove students’ reading comprehension and writing composition skills.
Vocabulary Ladders: Understanding Word Nuances provides students with fun and engaging vocabulary activities tosupport word knowledge within reading and writing skills.  This resource provides a framework to teach related words using a cluster approachthat helps students learn many semantically related words at once.  With this series, students will: 

discuss difference between themed words
order words and explain their thinking
use words in context
use words in writing

About the Author

Timothy Rasinski, Ph.D., is a Professor of Literacy Education at Kent State University. He is the author of several best-selling books and numerous articles on reading education, word study, and reading fluency. He is a popular and frequent presenter at reading and literacy conferences nationwide. His research is cited by the National Reading Panel in the development of Reading First.                                                                   

Melissa Cheesman Smith, M.Ed., holds a master’s degree in curriculum andinstruction and has been teaching for 15 years.  She teaches elementaryfull time, teachers literacy c