Vocabulary Workshop Level Red (2013)

I love the VW series. My older boys have used it from 2nd grade and on. I was happy to find out they added 1st grade level to their series. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this is in a totally different format than the other elementary level workbooks. There're hardly any texts in the book. The 'intro' part has three pictures, and the online content has the reading of the story/article. Each vocab review exercise has matching pictures with the words, writing the words that goes with the pictures, choosing the correct pictures for the words, and writing a sentence using one of the vocabularies.They recently updated the online content and I love it (as of Oct 2016). The narrator reads the story/article that goes with each unit, and he explains the vocabularies and gives an example sentence for each word. Each word appears with pictures that goes along with it (online flash cards?). It has different kinds of activities/games, so by the time your child goes through all the online content and the workbook, s/he will master the vocabularies. When I say 'master,' I mean they will not just know the words, but will know how to appropriately & correctly use them. The website also offers three different graphic organizers (Concept Circle, Word Square, & Word Web) to use with every unit.My child enjoyed both the workbook and online content. The 2nd grade (purple) level gets difficult (suddenly loaded with passages and all the definitions and exercises), so I think the Level Red provides a solid foundation for the next level.

As a teacher, this is a good deal

everything was great. Fast delivery

Excellent!

I used the higher levels when being homeschooled as a child. Now as a teacher for English as Another Language students, I sought these books out to increase the vocabulary (and therefore the comprehension) of my EAL students. The first two that I started working with LOVED them. They are at a high-tech school and yet these books which have a simple format, sensible exercises that are directly linked to the reading piece at the beginning of each unit engrossed them.When I was a classroom teacher, I used to recommend these books to parents at parent teacher interviews for the students to increase their vocabulary as they are easily used by students on their own with little to no aide from parents needed (and very important for filling the gaps to aide students in catching up).The first in the series is Level Red and can be used for a child who is not yet reading with online audios that you can get of the stories which contain the vocabulary and online vocabulary lists, flashcards and "games"/exercises. I'm not a fan of buying digital data generally, but for many this would be a good investment as it can be used with subsequent children without using up the exercise book. All the others including Level Green have a short story containing the words for the week. Then it is followed by a dictionary definition with a sentence example for each meaning of the word (very useful for showing a word that has one meaning as a noun and another as a verb etc.). The rest are multiple choice, cloze, word context exercises to practice using the words in their correct context.I'd highly recommend the entire series for Preschool to Year 12. A parent who wishes to supplement or homeschool would be making an extremely wise choice to use the books one grade ahead of its recommendation as the last 2 books are staggered to be both used in Senior/Year 12/First year of college. Level Red is usually recommended for Grade 1, I'd recommend it for Kinder, Purple for Year To introduce your kids to a wide variety of words and their uses ahead of their peers will go a long way in terms of comprehension (you won't need to work so hard on comprehension if they already know the meaning of infrequently used words. I would also recommend doing a Glossary compilation of all their textbooks: go to the end of each text book and see if they have a vocabulary/glossary list and go through their meanings at the end of Summer before school so that they already have the skills they need to decode the texts when they read them. Some books introduce ideas without having explained all the terms. Save your child the stress and build their vocabulary first so that they will comprehend the text without spending so much effort trying to figure out the words individually).I was least fond of the first book as it doesn't have the stories in them and so you have to go online whereas the others have online stories/activities as an option but I would recommend it based that it could be used with a Preschool/Grade 1 student who is beginning but not fully confident with reading.The entire series has a common format, logical, sequential and simple enough that the child/student is not intimidated by the new concepts and the new concepts (new words) are just high enough that they raise the child's thinking of their use of words but not so above ordinary language that they are irrelevant.