Dear LuAnn,

The Some Words Vocabulary Series is recommended for the fourth through eighth grades and designed to give your students an edge in essential vocabulary skills. These vocabulary skills will not only support your Middle School students in spelling, but in reading, writing, and throughout the communications curriculum.

These consumable mini-courses are intended to be completed independently by students to reinforce the direct instruction your teachers offer in vocabulary. If you are a Sourcebook user, you will find that the Middle School resources have a strong vocabulary focus. By Middle School, spelling and vocabulary go hand in hand. Since there is no teacher preparation necessary, Some Words is a great differentiation tool for students who need extra practice on a concept or could use extensions beyond their grade-level peers.

Some Words - Have Prefixes and Some Words - Have Suffixes are a great starting place to ensure that your Middle School students have a strong foundation in the meanings of the most common prefixes and suffixes, as well as how affixes affect the meaning of a root. Since there are so many homophones in the English language, we offer two mini-courses on these important but often misused words. I would suggest that you start with Some Words – Are Homophones 1 and then move to Some Words – Are Homophones 2. The Some Words - Are Often Confused is an excellent next step, focusing on the many words in our language that tend to be misused or confused due to similarities in sounds and/or meanings. Some Words - Have Greek Roots and Some Words – Have Latin Roots are a great challenge, reinforcing the meanings behind the many roots used in our language and how they apply to real words.

Teachers can use formative data from writing samples, the Skill Test, the Cloze Story Word Test, or Seeds for Sowing activities to differentiate instruction by having students work in different books.

The Some Words books are great resources for independent practice, offering the right balance of support and challenge for many students. They feature an "on-another-paper" extension activity on each page that can push highly capable spellers to a new level, while other students may focus on the activities inside the books. Additionally, while the teacher is working directly with a small group of struggling spellers, the rest of the class can be working on these mini-courses, gaining a deeper and more fluid understanding and application of essential vocabulary skills.

Hope this helps and I'm glad to hear things are going well with your Sitton implementation!

Sincerely,