My oldest son is in sixth grade. We have taught him from a more than one vocabulary curriculum over the years. However, now that his reading is getting more complex- for fun, he is reading from the Lord of Rings Trilogy right now- I decided that it was a great idea to change his vocabulary curriculum again. This time, I went with Educators Publishing Service (EPS) Vocabulary From Classical Roots, by Norma Fifer and Nancy Flowers

Features:

This book features root words from Greek and Latin languages. My son learned word families so that he could figure out the meanings of many words derived from one Greek or Latin word. For example, in one lesson, he is given "Fero, Ferre, Tuli, Latum," which mean to bring, to bear, to carry. A list of words that are familiar to him is provided in a box. There is a list of challenge words in another box. His vocabulary words that went with the roots in the example: defer, dilatory, elation, and infer. Each is defined, part of speech provided, and used in a sentence. If there is more than one meaning, there will be more than one example sentence.

Lessons:

There are five parts to each lesson, so it should be completed over five separate days. In the first lesson, it provides the fifteen vocabulary words and corresponding word families. Then, the student identifies synonyms and antonyms found in multiple choice questions. Another exercise has students identify which, out of two, sentences the word in bold is used correctly. The last exercise for lesson one is fill in the blank using vocabulary words in their proper form (present, past, etc). Then, there is a test. The test has multiple choice questions and "choose the best analogy" questions.

Lessons two through sixteen have similar activities. If you want to have the vocabulary lessons span the length of the school year, you could choose to assign three one week and two the next. On the days that they do not work in their vocabulary book, they could do composition lessons where they incorporate a given number of vocabulary words from the lesson they are working on. I prefer that my kids do five lessons a week. Once the lessons are completed, I have them work on composition daily and refer back to their lessons to include vocabulary words. Either method should increase their long term memory of the words they learned from vocabulary.

Recommend?

Yes, I do recommend these books. My son also gives a thumbs up for this vocabulary series. I have chosen to order the next level for my son while he is in seventh grade. I plan to order them for my other children once they reach sixth grade as well. My kids use Wordly Wise 3000 in second and third grade. In forth and fifth grade, Vocabulary Workshop.