Greetings! Welcome to my web. And speaking of webs, I think one of the best things we can do for students who strive to make sense of the English language is to help them weave related words together, building networks, making connections. As a doctoral student, I seek ways to help all learners gain and retain new vocabulary. Like Nagy (2007), I believe teaching word consciousness and word structure should be "obligatory, not optional" in every classroom and that once we have created sensitivity to language and interest in words, we have primed the pump for accelerated vocabulary development (Graves, 2006). This is important, because word knowledge enables comprehension (Kintsch & Kintsch, 2005; Stahl, 2005).

What's new?  Daily Oral Vocabulary Exercises: A Program to Expand Academic Language. This four-color consumable book by Susan Ebbers and Jill Carroll was written for students who struggle to understand textbooks. Common academic words like demonstrate, indicate, and transfer are taught and reviewed in context 51 times on average throughout the school year. The program utilizes rich context, definitions, Spanish cognates, and conversational partner practice-pages.