Dancing with Words: Helping Students Love Language through Authentic Vocabulary Instruction
Reviewed by Sandra Epperson

I selected Dancing with Words: Helping Students Love Language through Authentic Vocabulary Instruction by Judith Rowe Michaels largely for the poetry. Then I was taken in by the idea of not using wordlists to teach vocabulary. Most language arts textbook series have a vocabulary piece, but that piece is not necessarily tied to anything that the students know. Sometimes the vocabulary instruction is connected to a story or a reading of some kind, but the words remain arbitrary selected by the editors of the text. Dancing with Words also shows how important it is for the vocabulary to include words with multiple meanings, which will help the special education and the ELL students in class. Michaels also discusses the difference between often confused words and phrases such as different from and different than, affect and effect, and fewer and less. She teaches this by having the students keep a vocabulary notebook with words and definitions in it. In my class I can see how such a notebook may be used to clarify the difference between are and our.

Dancing with Words is written for high school level students. Many of the examples are from a ninth grade classroom. I can see how some of the material and ideas will transfer to a sixth grade class. I especially like how Michaels encourages word play in her classes. Students include the word play in their vocabulary notebook for instance, they would write all of the words they can associate with sol like solstice, solar, and solar power.

All in all, I enjoyed this book. It was easy to read with practical ideas. The writing style was not too ìacademic.î That made it easy to read. Dancing with Words was definitely written by a teacher for teachers.