Unlocking the Power of Academic Vocabulary with Secondary English Language Learners (Maupin House)

This is a great vocabulary instruction book that blends theory with practice in such a clear and concise manner!! It opens my eyes to ELLs who I knew little about before. The author has shown many excellent ESL vocabulary teaching examples taken from real classrooms across academic disciplines. As a biology teacher who has been looking for creative and exciting vocabulary instructional strategies, I found this book to be by far the best in discussing and illustrating creative and stimulating vocabulary instruction. I believe the book can be used not only by ESL teachers who teach English language learners but also regular teachers who teach native speaking students in all secondary subject matter areas. Plus the book has a list of academic vocabulary used in various subject matter areas. A truly wonderful book to have!

As a teacher educator who prepares future teachers to teach linguistically and culturally diverse learners, I was pleasantly surprised to find this book. This is an excellent text to use both in the college classroom and everyday teaching. It makes vocabulary learning fun, exciting, and meaningful. I especially like the author's argument throughout the book: vocabulary learning is concept learning, thus an integral part of subject matter teaching. This book is resourceful, clearly written and reader friendly. Word posters, connotation and collocation activities, source-based instruction, word buffet, vocabulary Haiku; just to name a few, are excellent, in-depth, and refreshing ways of teaching vocabulary. A must-have for all middle and high school teachers! I highly recommended!

I found this book to be a great resource to any teacher that has any kind of language barrier within their classroom. The author gives concrete examples of real-life scenarios within a classroom as well as excellent ideas on how to handle certain language situations and how to enhance their students learning potential. Being a student teacher myself, I recommend this book to every teacher of ELL students and plan on using it myself!

A++

This book was very timely for me. I work with some teens from different countries in foster home situations. This summer I will again be working with a group of them in an ESL class. I just talked to the directors of the program and mentioned that I thought some subject matter English vocabulary would be helpful for the teens. This book does exactly that. There are many ideas for how to approach the problems of vocabulary with the students. In addition to the helpful, specific suggestions, there are good lists at the end of the book to help with some subject area vocabulary needs.I will probably know a little more how successful this book is after trying some of these things this summer, but it has given me many ideas and I hope to recommend the book to other ESL teachers.