Using the Book
Where would we be without words? It’s hard to imagine. Words are a basic building block of communication, and a strong vocabulary is an essential part of reading, writing, and speaking well.  The purpose of this book is to help young learners expand the number of words they know and the ways in which they use them. Although 240 vocabulary words are introduced, many more  words and meanings are woven into the book’s 24 lessons.
Learning new words is not just about encountering them; it’s about using, exploring, and thinking about them. So the lessons in this book are organized around different aspects and attributes of  words—how words are formed using prefixes and suffixes, synonyms, antonyms, verbs, adjectives, homophones, homonyms, compound words, key content area vocabulary, and more.

Tips

• You’ll find a complete alphabetized list of all the lesson words on page 78.

• As you introduce the lessons, have the following items available: beginning dictionaries and thesauruses, and writing notebooks or journals in which students can record words and use them in sentences.