How do *YOU* implement MCT's Word Within the Word?

[songsparrow]

As I mentioned in another thread, I am strongly considering using Michael Clay Thompson's Word Within the Word for my daughter's 8th grade vocabulary building program.

 

I have been searching online to try to find some examples from people who used the series, of how they implemented it.  Unfortunately, I haven't turned up very much.  I did find this from MCT:

 

"The core of the program is the list, the Notes pages, and the quizzes. The rest is a buffet of activities that you can do at your discretion. There is so much content available that you could do nothing else in life if you were not careful. The key is to have the child study each list and learn the definitions of the stems. Do not focus on the words so much, just let the stem magic accumulate. The student should read the Notes page in each lesson, seeing the background information that is there. In my Northwester classes I have the student take the weekly quiz and make three comments about the notes on the Notes page: What note is most surprising, what note is most interesting, and what note is most important. Why in each case. In the homeschool setting, I would ask the child to choose several of the other activities or questions from each chapter and do them. The child might choose different activities each time."  (bolding mine)

 

So, I was hoping that some people here who use WWW will share how they implement it.  What sections do you read/do together? What sections do your students do independently?  How do you schedule it?  Are there supplemental things you do (e.g., Quizlet, dictionary work, memorization techniques, etc.)?

 

ETA: I did find this thread on the High School Boards where some people recently shared how they implemented WWW.  But if anyone else would also be willing to share, it would be much appreciated!

[nansk]

:bigear:

I found a couple of threads about WWtW: one, two.

 

 

 

Do not focus on the words so much, just let the stem magic accumulate.

I found this bit interesting, because I have another vocab book, and it has the exact same advice - Do not memorize the words. Merely read and understand the key (i.e. stem).

 

 

 

In the homeschool setting, I would ask the child to choose several of the other activities or questions from each chapter and do them. The child might choose different activities each time.

What are these "activities" that the author suggests?

 

[songsparrow]

:bigear:

I found a couple of threads about WWtW: one, two.

 

What are these "activities" that the author suggests?

 

Those threads were helpful and I hadn't seen them yet - thanks!

 

When I looked at the sample lesson from the Student book of WWW1, there were:

1.  A page titled "Ideas" with 8 discussion questions

2.  A page with 10 analogies.  

3.  A page titled "Classic Words" with 5 multiple-choice questions that take sentences from classic literature, remove one word and ask the student to guess what word should fill in the blank.  The instructions say, "This is not a test; it is more like a game because more than one word choice may work perfectly well. See if you can use your sensitivity and intuition to guess correctly which word the author used. You may need a dictionary."

 

In addition, I saw references to:

1.  Mystery Spelling

2.  Mystery Questions

3.  Flip Side Test 

Perhaps these are in the Parent Manual?

[Space station]

At the beginning of the year, we did everything together. We skipped most of the history. By the middle of the year, dd did it independently, except that I still helped her with analogies. She made quizlet flash card lists and practiced them daily. By list 20, she was starting to get burned out, but then she turned the page and saw list 21. No more stems, just words that were made of stems she knew. She took the quiz for that chapter the next day, and got 100%. That was the magic. It took a while to get to it, but she thinks it was worth it. I gave her the option not to do vocab this year, or to use a different program, but she insisted that she wanted to move on to WWW2.

[Space station]

Yes, mystery spelling and mystery questions are only in the teacher's manual. I don't know what flip side tests are, but I know they have a new edition this year, so maybe that is new.

[nansk]

Thanks for sharing the info from the student book.

A page titled "Classic Words" with 5 multiple-choice questions that take sentences from classic literature, remove one word and ask the student to guess what word should fill in the blank.  The instructions say, "This is not a test; it is more like a game because more than one word choice may work perfectly well. See if you can use your sensitivity and intuition to guess correctly which word the author used. You may need a dictionary."

This reminds me of an idea nmoira had shared for pulling sentences from good children's lit. She used this to pull sentences for spelling words, but we can do it for vocab, too.

 

 

Either Gutenberg or Google Books (http://books.google....ced_book_search) (choose "full view only").

I had a link for searching through full Gutenberg texts, but it no longer works. There is a link for a almost complete text search at the bottom of this page:

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/

It uses this Google format:
 

site:gutenberg.org searchterm1 searchterm2

I usually throw in an author's name: Nesbit, Barrie, Pyle, etc. to pull up books I know are children's lit:
 

site:gutenberg.org nesbit profound

M

 

[songsparrow]

I had no idea you could do that on Gutenberg - that's awesome!

[daijobu]

I asked the same question recently.  Here's the thread that resulted.