NOTE: ALL FORMS OF CHEATING WILL RESULT IN LOWERING OF THE COURSE GRADE (INCLUDING A POSSIBLEGRADE OF F FOR THE COURSE) AND A REPORT TO THE OFFICE OF STUDENT RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES. VISIT THEIR WEBSITE AND STUDY ALL OF ITS PAGES CAREFULLY. SERIOUS CHEATING CAN RESULT IN EXPULSION FROM CAL POLY. READ ALSO MY PLAGIARISM WARNING.

• IDENTIFY the publisher, GRADE LEVEL, and title of the package ON THE COVER PAGE OR AT THE TOP OF THE FIRST PAGE in the title of the paper. You must work with a package aimed at a grade between 3rd and eighth. PERMITTED PUBLISHERS ARE Houghton-Mifflin; Macmillan/McGraw-Hill; Harcourt; SRA McGraw-Hill; Pearson/Prentice Hall; or Holt (grades 6-8).
• Examine the Teacher's Annotated Edition and a Practice Book for the purpose of this paper.
• Evaluate these materials with regard to how well they conform to recommendations for vocabulary instruction that were made in class, with regard to the questions below. You must report how the package deals with (or doesn't deal with) the given points. Divide your paper into sections with titles as given in 1-5 below. For each of these 5 topics, you must
  
• Say whether a linguist would approve of the way vocabulary instruction is handled by the package. That is, compare the instructional approach of the package with what is recommended in class as a sound linguistic approach to vocabulary instruction. Be very direct about this: use language along the lines of "this part of the package conforms well - poorly - does not conform to linguists' recommendations" or similar language (use your own words; vary the expression).
• Explain why the package's approach would be judged positively or negatively by a linguist, using reasoning given in class and in the readings. Again, be direct: "A linguist would approve of this approach because ... " In this section, give details about the benefit of linguists' recommended teaching practices to children's vocabulary expansion.
• You must cite our readings (articles and textbooks assigned for the class) whenever they support a point you are making in your evaluation, and therefore have a bibiliography at the end of the paper. Use a recognized format: MLA or APA. If you don't know what this means, FIND OUT: Consult a college writing manual or the Writing Lab (10-130).
• If your paper does not evaluate the package in this way, it will not receive a grade above D.

HERE are the five topics to evaluate:

1. Explicit teaching of context-guessing skills
2. Explicit teaching of derivational morphology (roots and prefixes/suffixes), for both English affixes (such as 'un-', '-ness', etc.) and Latin- or Greek-derived roots and affixes. (Look for 'Latin' or 'Greek' in indexes.) (The phrase "derivational morphology" is not usually used. Look for "Word Analysis", "Structural Analysis" word structure, or "prefixes/suffixes", "root words", etc. The lower grades include some of this work in Phonics lessons.)
3. Providing model sentences or texts showing how a word is used before students are expected to use it themselves. The models may be in readings or in separate sentences in vocabulary workbooks.
4. How much emphasis does the program place on dictionary lookup?
5. Organizing lists of vocabulary words using the principles of categorization and association, rather than randomly choosing words just because they appear in a particular reading selection. Browse individual lessons in the TAE; look for index entries such as "classifying", "categorizing", "word webs".
   
• With your paper, include a photocopy of ONE lesson for each topic 1-5. Refer to your samples in your paper; use them to illustrate how the package addresses the various skills. Attach these in the text of the paper after the relevant section; number them by hand. THESE DO NOT CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR PAGE COUNT; subtract them when figuring your page count.

Here are some questions to answer to help you evaluate the package: