Intended for elementary school teachers, researchers, and materials
developers, this book presents a cluster approach to vocabulary
instruction, in which words are taught in semantically related groups.
Over 7,000 words from elementary school textbooks have been organized
into 61 instructional clusters, each containing two levels of
subclusters which are grouped according to closeness of semantic
relationship. For each word, the authors have provided a recommended
grade level, its part of speech, and a note on whether it is a basic,
fundamental building block word. The list of clusters is presented in
the appendix. The four chapters that precede the appendix describe
vocabulary theory, procedures for forming the clusters, instructional
uses of the clusters, and additional vocabulary activities not directly
tied to cluster approach. Also included in separate appendixes are (1)
an alphabetized, referenced list of the words; and (2) definitions of
commonly confused words such as "infer" and "imply."