Worth it Wednesday {Word Feast Middle School}

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I can't believe it's already Wednesday again! I've got another great product in store for you, but this week's feature is a little bit different. Instead of featuring a TpT product (which I promise I'll get back to doing next week!!) I'm reviewing a product that I know many people were wondering about- Word Feast Middle School!

I've been using this book, along with the Elementary version for my young kiddos, for almost a month now. The layout of the book makes it incredibly easy to teach the vocabulary. Every section starts out with a page like this. 

The page includes the new words that your student will learn, as well as words from the previous lessons (which I think is wonderful!). Prompts are included as to how to start the session, such as what questions to ask your students to get them thinking about what they will be talking about during that lesson. The page also includes the pages of the reading passages and activities in the lesson.

After the initial page, there are your reading excerpts. There's always one longer story that uses all of the vocabulary words in it. The vocab words are bolded in the text to make them easier to find. 

The next page or two include additional reading passages where the vocab is used. I really like these pages- they are usually set up as ads or postcards, something small that our students might see in real life that includes the vocabulary words. 

The page(s) after that include the definitions of the vocabulary words. I like them being here instead of first in the lesson. Why? Because I like seeing if my students know the definition before we start the lesson. I will read the words and ask if they had heard these words before. I write down what they think the definitions are on a white board. As we read each reading passage, I ask my students if their idea for the definition has changed. You'll be surprised how one context suddenly makes the definition clear to a student over another context!

What I love about these definition pages are that it includes its part of speech, the definition, a usage tip, and then correct vs. incorrect usage of the word. After we review the word's definition and talk about its usage tip, I say both sentences, in random order so the correct sentence isn't always first, and ask which sentence had the vocabulary word being used the right way.

After we go over the definitions, I usually have them put some (if not all) of their words in a vocabulary graphic organizer. You can find the one I use here.

The next pages are the activities where you can apply the vocabulary words that your students have learned. Here are a few examples....

 

 

Other examples of activities include Association Activities, Synonyms and Antonyms, and Create your own Sentences. There are many activities to do that apply your students' knowledge of the vocabulary words. I'm not saying that this should replace your work with curriculum vocab, it most definitely should not. But it is a wonderful supplement that introduces your students to more Tier 2 words that they might not get in school. 

So what do I love? In addition to everything above, let me tell you a few more things....

• The lessons are age appropriate. Aside from getting things from your students' textbooks, it is often hard to find passages that expand and build upon each other like you can find here. 
• The lessons increase in difficulty, challenging your students more and more as you go. Also, the lessons are mostly curricular based.
• The vocabulary are Tier 2 words, which is oh so important for our middle school population. 
• The vocabulary words are repeated throughout the entire book. A word you use in one lesson may reappear in following lessons. 

I purchased these books on my own. Linguisystems did not provide me with these books in exchange for my review. 

Have you used the Word Feast books in therapy? What do you think??