Word Nerds takes you inside classrooms at a high-poverty urban school and shows how two teachers implement creative, flexible vocabulary instruction that improves their students' word knowledge and confidence, enhances classroom community, and increases achievement. Leslie Montgomery and Margot Holmes Smith weave vocabulary into each school day using multisensory instruction that includes music, art, literature, movement, games, drama, writing, test-taking skills, and technology. Along the way, they turn every student into a lover of language. With support from literacy specialist Brenda Overturf, Leslie and Margot have developed a five-part plan--introducing new words in context, adding related synonyms and antonyms, engaging students in several days of active learning, celebrating new words, and assessing vocabulary development--that teaches all students to learn and love vocabulary. This easy-to-read reference explains how to plan, teach, and assess based on the latest research in vocabulary instruction and learning. Forget copying definitions from the dictionary and completing boring worksheets Word mastery comes from intimate knowledge of language. From prediction to practice to performance, students from all backgrounds can discover how to make words their own. After incorporating Leslie's and Margot's vocabulary plan into your daily instruction, you and your students can become word nerds, too

Are You a Word Nerd? Did you know... Only a human (not an animal or thing) is "able" to do something The five on dice is called cinque "K" for strike-out in baseball comes from the last letter of "struck" To skice is to frisk about like squirrels in spring For word lovers everywhere, Word Nerd is a rich—and fun—compendium of more than 17,000 fascinating facts about words. Bestselling author Barbara Anne Kipfer has spent years compiling little known tidbits about common—and not so common—words in the English language. Filled with interesting information about words, sure to amaze and spark conversation, this incredible collection is perfect for the word nerd in each of us.

The English language is full of beauty and surprises. If you're a lover of the weird and wonderful, from fascinating etymology to the ten most overused and useless English phrases, this book isn't averse to a peppering of persiflage! Did you know: - pilots and air traffic controllers at major air international airports have to speak English - the hashtag symbol is an "octothorpe" - "bumfiddle" means to spoil a piece of paper or document - the word "noon" originally meant 3pm; the literal meaning of "bamboozle" is to make a baboon out of someone. This book contains a boatload of things you didn't know about the English language and it's a guaranteed prolix-free zone.

Effortlessly acquire an SAT vocabulary through hilarious high school essays Every year, 9 million American students expend large amounts of time and energy preparing for proficiency and entrance exams like the SAT, ACT, PSAT, and SSAT with a heap of vocabulary flash cards and a fat volume of repetitive practice tests. Each one of them, along with their parents and teachers, wishes that there was a less painful way to prepare for test day. There is, and this book is the solution: a collection of ten well-written, entertaining essays by recent college-graduates-turned-writers that honestly and amusingly recount wild, traumatizing, and hilarious high-school events, using common SAT words as a study tool. (*gluteus: any of the large muscles of the buttocks; esp: gluteus maximus)

Building on the ideas developed in Word Nerds: Teaching All Students to Learn and Love Vocabulary , Brenda J. Overturf has updated and energized the recommended practices for middle grades students. Vocabularians is for any educator who wants to help young adolescents increase knowledge and competency with word study while bringing interest, motivation, and even joy to their learning. Brenda takes teachers and administrators inside three middle-level schools where educators are integrating vocabulary instruction across the curriculum. In rural, urban, and suburban settings, she highlights effective ways to develop students' vocabulary skills using art, music, games, technology, reading, writing, speaking, listening, and critical thinking. Vocabularians shows teachers of all content areas how to build word networks, flood the classroom environment with academic vocabulary, and incorporate the three word-solving strategies that researchers have found to be the most important-;teaching students how to use context; deciphering words by breaking down prefixes, suffixes, and root words; and using reference materials in authentic ways. By blending current research with real classroom experience and application, Brenda builds on her work with Margot Holmes Smith and Leslie Montgomery and offers an easy-to-implement, customized-to-middle-school resource that will improve instruction and assessment. As one featured seventh grader shared: Vocabulary helps you because the more you know words, the more fluent you can be in reading, the better you can read and write, and the better your writing sounds. There's always going to be a time when you have to sound professional, whether you're applying for a job or anything else. You're just going to have to know how to use a good vocabulary.-

Twelve-year-old Ambrose is a glass-half-full kind of guy. A self-described “friendless nerd,” he moves from place to place every couple of years with his overprotective mother, Irene. When some bullies at his new school almost kill him by slipping a peanut into his sandwich — even though they know he has a deathly allergy — Ambrose is philosophical. Irene, however, is not and decides that Ambrose will be home-schooled. Alone in the evenings when Irene goes to work, Ambrose pesters Cosmo, the twenty-five-year-old son of the Greek landlords who live upstairs. Cosmo has just been released from jail for breaking and entering to support a drug habit. Quite by accident, Ambrose discovers that they share a love of Scrabble and coerces Cosmo into taking him to the West Side Scrabble Club, where Cosmo falls for Amanda, the club director. Posing as Ambrose’s Big Brother to impress her, Cosmo is motivated to take Ambrose to the weekly meetings and to give him lessons in self-defense. Cosmo, Amanda, and Ambrose soon form an unlikely alliance and, for the first time in his life, Ambrose blossoms. The characters at the Scrabble Club come to embrace Ambrose for who he is and for their shared love of words. There’s only one problem: Irene has no idea what Ambrose is up to. In this brilliantly observed novel, author Susin Nielsen transports the reader to the world of competitive Scrabble as seen from the honest yet funny viewpoint of a boy who’s searching for acceptance and for a place to call home.

Bring the science of reading directly into the classroom! Developed for Grades 6-12, this resource offers teachers meaningful strategies to build students’ reading and writing skills. This book provides easy-to-use methods and lessons to help older learners practice word recognition, reading comprehension and content knowledge, and writing. With these research-based strategies, middle and high school teachers can make reading and writing simple, engaging, and effective! This book meets College and Career Readiness and other state standards.

Enlighten Up Already! Monet? Manet? Who can even tell the difference? Well, with the help of the newest mental_floss tome, you can! Want to learn how to tell egg rolls from spring rolls, nuclear bombs from dirty nuclear bombs, or even how to tell an idiot from a moron (there's a real scientific difference)? Piece of cake! Whether you're trying to impress your boss, your mother-in-law, attractive singles, or a pack of fourth graders (you know how they love semantics), mental_floss gives you all the tips and tricks to have you sounding like a genius.

From the era-defining author of Generation X comes a novel of overworked coders who escape the serfdom of Bill Gates to forge their own path. They are Microserfs—six code-crunching computer whizzes who spend upward of sixteen hours a day “coding” and eating “flat” foods (food which, like Kraft singles, can be passed underneath closed doors) as they fearfully scan company e-mail to learn whether the great Bill is going to “flame” one of them. But now there’s a chance to become innovators instead of cogs in the gargantuan Microsoft machine. The intrepid Microserfs are striking out on their own—living together in a shared digital flophouse as they desperately try to cultivate well-rounded lives and find love amid the dislocated, subhuman whir and buzz of their computer-driven world.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Unteachables, Gordon Korman, comes a hilarious new high-concept friendship story in the vein of Back to the Future. Perfect for fans of Korman’s Restart. Mason and Ty were once the very best of friends, like two nerdy sides of the same coin . . . until seventh grade, when Ava Petrakis came along. Now Mason can trace everything bad in his life to that terrible fight they had over the new girl. The one thing he’d give anything for is a do-over. But that can’t happen in real life—can it? As a science kid, Mason knows do-overs are impossible, so he can’t believe it when he wakes up from a freak accident and finds himself magically transported back to seventh grade. His parents aren’t yet divorced and his beloved sheepdog is still alive. Best of all, he and Ty haven’t had their falling-out yet. It makes no logical sense, but Mason is determined to use this second chance to not only save his friendship (and his dog!) but do other things differently—like trying out for the football team and giving new friends a chance. There’s just one person he’ll be avoiding at all costs: Ava. But despite his best efforts, will he be able to stop the chain of events that made his previous life implode?