The header for this issue of the Prestwick House Footnotes Newsletter comes from the cover of the Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classic edition ofA Midsummer Night's Dream.
Over the past few months, we have been working to create even more products to help great teachers like you to remain both innovative and effective in your approach to teaching.
Develop strategies to construct word meanings by using context clues
Determine the meaning of unfamiliar or complex words through structural analysis through identifying roots, prefixes, and suffixes derived from Greek and Latin
Use their knowledge of synonyms, antonyms, homographs, and homophones to uncover the meanings of unfamiliar words
Understand and interpret the literal and figurative use of words
Determine the meaning of words by recalling their literary, historical, or mythological origins
The Question is Not "Whether" but "How" Polonius, the fool, asks Hamlet, “What are you reading?” And Hamlet answers, “Words, words, words.”
True enough—we read words, hear words, speak words, write words, and—but for a few specific exceptions—we think words. Our students do too. Therefore, it behooves us (and them) to know as many words as possible so that we are better prepared to understand what others are communicating to us and better able to communicate with others.
Study after study (we’ve all read them) compares advantaged students (i.e., kids who grew up in homes with reading materials readily available and whose parents read to them when they were little) to disadvantaged students (i.e., the kids who were not read to and did not grow up in homes filled with books, magazines, and newspapers). Advantaged kids from “literacy-rich” homes start school with vocabularies that are nearly twice as large as the disadvantaged kids.
While this statistic might be distressing, it’s not surprising, and it’s not hard to understand why such a disparity exists.
What is surprising and difficult to understand is the well-documented conclusion that, once both sets of kids enter school, the gap does not narrow; it widens!
Prestwick House in the News As a result of our continuing effort to make teachers' lives easier, Prestwick House has made strides towards expanding the number of products on our website. We have added over 500 individual eLessons, created a brand new vocabulary program for struggling students, and partnered with other great educational publishers to make their products available on our website.
SMARTBoard-Enhanced Presentations in the ELA Classroom Excerpted from an interview on SMARTBoard Technology with Staff Writer, Daniel Reed. To read more, visit PrestwickHouse.com. Can you talk a little bit about how Prestwick House is taking the already popular PowerPoint for the Classroom series of presentations and adding new SMARTBoard features?
Seeing the potential to enhance learning through SMARTBoard technology, we have taken our traditional, essentially passive presentations, and using SMARTBoard as an interface, created opportunites for students to interact with the presentations.
While these are still valuable and functional as traditional presentations, they also prompt students to complete exercises on the presentation screen itself, providing classroom viewers the benefit of watching, critiquing, or correcting the process.
SMARTBoard is a tool that makes use of the advantages of group learning; the presentation creates a center of focus and prompts students to think together in order to complete exercises together. Each SMARTBoard-enhanced presentation contains a classroom-ready, easy-to-use lesson interspersed with interactive exercises. Click Here to Read the Complete Article at PrestwickHouse.com
This Month at The Prestwick Cafe Blog
Check out what's happening at the Prestwick Cafe blog this fall, and be sure to stop by our Facebook and Twitter Pages for more fun and useful information!
"The format of Multiple Critical Perspectives Guides is user-friendly and helpful, and doesn't requre that the teacher bring addition information to the lesson...The material was varied, interesting, and included wonderful options and a wide variety of information from which to choose. I found it student-friendly and enjoyable." - Susan Mulligan
"I think these guides sort of takes up where Bloom's Notes series leaves off. That is, whereas Bloom's Notes summarized the major criticism of a work, this guide offers a wealth of learning activities and questions for student discussion." - Julie Seeley
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Over the past few months, we have been working to create even more products to help great teachers like you to remain both innovative and effective in your approach to teaching.
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As a result of our continuing effort to make teachers' lives easier, Prestwick House has made strides towards expanding the number of products on our website. We have added over 500 individual 
Check out what's happening at the 
