Bringing Words to Life, First Edition

Reviews / Votes

'This little book is a gem. It shows how teachers can teach word meanings so powerfully that students of all ages will be able to grasp an author's meaning or communicate their own more effectively. The book offers a well-organized and first-rate plan for teaching vocabulary, presented by a team of researchers with a genuine grasp for the practical.' - Timothy Shanahan, Center for Literacy, University of Illinois at Chicago

'This book succinctly addresses the challenges of teaching and developing vocabulary, providing research-bases, clearly-spelled-out strategies and many, many rich examples. It gives teachers the tools they need to effectively increase students' vocabularies. Reflecting the author's own expertise with words, the book is written clearly enough for undergraduates, yet has a level of depth that will lend new insights to even the most advanced student of language and literacy. This book should be required reading in teacher and reading specialist preparation programs and should be used in in-service programs with reading, language arts, and English teachers as well as with content area teachers. If the strategies and suggestions offered in this book were widely and intensely implemented, we would see significant increases in student's verbal abilities and reading comprehension scores.' - John J. Pikulski, School of Education, University of Delaware

'Bringing Words to Life lives up to its title. It made me want to gather a group of kids immediately, so I could start putting these sensible, practical, novel, and intriguing ideas about building vocabulary into practice. Beck, McKeown, and Kucan show how much fun learning words and teaching words can be. Every early childhood and elementary teacher should have this book on their bedside table for inspirational reading.' - Catherine E. Snow, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University