3rd Grade Word Wizards Need 'Wordly Wise 3000'!

Funded Jan 21, 2020

Thank you very much for your financial donations this past January. You helped me reach my classroom goal within a week! And my, how American schooling has changed since then! Our school is closed now due to the Coronavirus pandemic and we are now teaching and learning online. However, I will share with you when we used Wordly Wise in the classroom and how happy I am that we used it consistently EVERYDAY since the books arrived February 3rd. Thank you for that! My students became word lovers just like their teacher! 😉

In third grade, students learn that words have different meanings, or multiple meanings. This program really drove home that point in a way that I hadn't been able to do before. For example, the word stress as a verb means to pay special attention to. The word stress as a noun can mean a strain or pressure put on a person or thing or the second meaning as a noun is a special force put on a word or part of a word.

Students also learned how to use a word, whether it's a verb, noun, adjective, or adverb. For example, the word influence can be a noun or a verb. Students learned that when used as a verb it is most likely part of the predicate and when used as a noun it is most likely part of the subject.

In my classroom, we used the Wordly Wise books to learn the words in one lesson per week. Students rose to the challenge because they were accustomed to only learn 8 words every two weeks, now they started learning ten plus words every single week! They did a great job and had a wonderful positive attitude.

I love to see when students make connections between what they learned from the Wordly Wise workbooks and other texts we read in class. It shows me these books have helped them grow their vocabulary, background knowledge and in turn, their overall reading comprehension. In addition, it shows me they are becoming more confident, independent and capable to initiate these connections. Imagine 8 and 9-year old students casually using words like chasm, vigorous, hinge, and gradual, in classroom conversations. I have been amazed by how much this program has helped my students learn vocabulary. In their writing and reading, are finally using language as an art to more accurate describe sentiments and prose they wish to convey.

Thank you for making all this possible. God bless you and please stay safe during these hard times.”

With gratitude,

Mrs. O'Neill