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Wordly Wise 3000 Book 7 Set, 4th Edition Review by Renee Knoblauch

Kenneth Hodkinson, Erika Hodkinson, Sandra Adam
EPS - School Specialty
800 225 5750
625 Mt Auburn St
Cambridge, MA 02138
http://eps.schoolspecialty.com/

I have been wanting to do a more formal vocabulary program with my son for a while now. I’ve normally just introduced vocabulary words through his spelling or with read-out-loud when we came across certain words. I felt he needed more exposure to vocabulary outside of his spelling words and books. For almost two months I have been using Wordly Wise 3000 Book 7 Set from School Specialty with my seventh-grade son.

The Wordly Wise 3000 Book 7 Set, fourth edition comes with two books, the Teacher Resource Book and the Student Vocabulary Book. The fourth edition has added in some new activities and exercises.

Wordly Wise 3000 Book 7 Set also comes with twelve months of access to Quizlet. The words are pre-loaded for the book you are using. You just need to add the access code provided in the front of your Student Vocabulary Book.

Teacher Resource Book 7 is a spiral bound book. It has everything needed to teach the program. It gives strategies broken down by each lesson and the vocabulary word taught in that lesson.It also has a section for EL strategies. Some of the EL strategies might be beneficial for kids with learning disabilities. I could see me using some of them with my daughter with special needs. Most of the strategy section tended to be more for the classroom setting. I gleaned a few good things from this section. One example is that I was able to use the questions to ask about the vocabulary words. Another example is the activity of looking at the suffix of a word and then my son had to think about other words using that same suffix. The strategies sections in each lesson are short and to the point. It is worth taking a few minutes to glance over the section.

There are three suggested schedules for once, three, or five times a week. For the homeschool setting I think the three to five times a week is situated more for the home environment. All the schedules include outside of the classroom homework assignments. You can just add that part to your schedule easily. Each day is broken down clearly for you to follow one of the schedules. The schedule also adds in the Quizlet program. The schedule is just suggested, and you can adapt it to fit your homeschool schedule.

We did five days a week depending on our outside schedule. Most of days took around twenty minutes. Depending on the exercises, we would go no more than thirty minutes and we would just pick up where we left off the next day.

Included in the Teacher Resource Book are Reproducible Masters. You can use this section to copy extra activity pages for your student.

Some of the Reproducible Masters include:

Rate Your Word Knowledge is a multiple-choice sheet that can be used with each lesson. You go over the vocabulary words and rate your knowledge for each word. It is a way for students to do a self-assessment of the word. For parents it lets you know which words may need more practice.

Vocabulary in Context uses the vocabulary in a story.This is an additional story from the Student Vocabulary Book.

Review and Test is also in this section and each lesson has one. The review is filling in the blank questions. The test is multiple choice questions. There are also two mid-term tests and four final tests.

An answer key is provided at the back of the book for every lesson.

A complete word list is provided on the back cover. In parentheses it tells you which lesson the word appears.

Student Vocabulary Book 7 is a consumable paperback workbook. Each student will need their own book.

Each lesson starts out with a Word List. The Word List has fifteen words that are in alphabetical order. The words are in a dictionary format with the word in bold and a pronunciation break down of the word, definition, parts of speech, and a sentence example. The first assignment is to study the definition of each word.

Below most words in the Word List is an exercise. I personally felt this is more of a classroom activity but, you could adapt it in your homeschool. They are simple exercises relevant to the vocabulary word. An example: writing down a list of superheroes and their powers that make them invincible or share your principal plans for the weekend. We didn’t do any of these exercises.

The exercises vary to help the student become more adept with the vocabulary. Exercises include multiple choice questions, crosswords, completing sentences, applying the meanings, circling the correct vocabulary word, writing prompts with certain vocabulary words, synonyms, antonyms, vocabulary stories, and other activities. The exercises are solid with keeping the vocabulary words throughout the lessons. I felt that all the exercises are easy to understand. Some of the exercises were challenging for my son,and yet others he breezed through.

I’ll give you a brief overview of what a lesson looks like. I’ll use Lesson 11 as an example. The exercises are labeled 11A, 11B, and so on.

Day one:

Word List study the words and definitions.

11A: Finding the Meaning: choose two phrases to form a sentence using current vocabulary correctly. There are eight exercises that have two words in each to answer. Students need to write down the correct phrases in the lines provided. If the student struggles or dislikes writing,they could write on the first line “b” and “a” for the first question and on the second line “d” and “c”. My daughter has learning and physical disabilities and this would have overwhelmed her and taken her a long time to copy the sentences. My son was fine writing out his sentences.

11B: Just the Right Word has a total of ten sentences. The vocabulary words are off to the side of the page and the student needs to replace a phrase in bold with one of the vocabulary words.

Work on Quizlet online after completing your workbook.

Day two:

11C:Applying Meanings exercise. My son circles the letters in this multiply choice activity of eight questions.He must pay close attentions as some questions may have more than one correct answer.

11D: Word Study Analogies a multiply choice exercise with ten questions using your vocabulary words. He must select a pair of analogies with a vocabulary word.

The lessons end with reviewing the lessons from the previous day and then Quizlet.

Day three:

11E: Vocabulary in Context uses some intriguing stories using the vocabulary words through literary and historical stories. After the story there is an exercise of fifteen questions that require writing down in your own words answers about the story. There isn’t an answer key to this section and may require more involvement from the parent depending on the student. This was the section that I found took us a bit longer. Some days my son would complete it in one sitting. It just depended on the story, his mood, and the vocabulary words. They do schedule an extra day for this exercise.

It is recommendedto use Quizlet.

Day four:

Finish up Vocabulary in Context and work on Quizlet afterwards.

Day five:

We take the test for the lesson.

That is what a typical five day schedule looks like except with the variation of exercises. The Vocabulary in Context is included in each lesson. Each lesson also includes a Fun & Fascinating Facts box that goes over two words and some interesting information that may have information from history, scientific, Latin, Greek, and other fun information.

Pros:

Several activities throughout that expose you to the words in different activities and exercises to teach vocabulary.

The cost is very reasonable to purchase.

I feel that many kids could do this independently with little or no help from the parent.

This is what I like to call an open and go curriculum that is easy to use and laid out nicely for a homeschool setting. I like it when the planning and everything is done for you. All I need to do is open the book when putting my son’s weekly schedule together to see if something may need my attention.

Cons:

Words from previous lessons are not reviewedin future lessons. You just are exposed to the words in an assigned lesson. Some words my son recalled and a few of the not so common words he couldn’t recall unless I used them in a sentence or gave him a hint.

For some this could be a lot of busy work and would require more help with the lessons.

Overall I thought Wordly Wise 3000 Book 7 Set was a good fit for my son. The vocabulary words had a good mix of relevant words some of whichchallenged him. He has been exposed to words that he has heard through our read-out-loud but, he was not confident how to use them in his vocabulary. My son didn’t mind the pace,nor the amount of work needed to complete the exercises.

Product review by Renee Knoblauch, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, December, 2018

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