Once a week a baby spider hatches out of the egg sac on the word web to reveal a new vocabulary word. Students are challenged to figure out the meaning, state it in their own words, and use the word in a sentence. Each time this is successfully done the student may add a wizard to our word wizard wall. Multiple achievements by the same student will result in stars rocketing off the end of the wizard's wand. Research has shown that the vocabulary of today's children lags far behind that of children forty years ago.
Vocabulary development is directly related to volume of reading.
This includes being read to. The popular media of television, newspapers, magazines, and music contain a very limited vocabulary. Reading and conversation around what is read is the best way to increase word knowledge. It is our hope that parents will join their children in these word web searches and creatively try to incorporate these new words into their everyday usage.