Michael Clay Thompson: Secondary Vocabulary, Word Within The Word - Series by Royal Fireworks Press

For a complete overview of our Language Arts Curriculum go to: Michael Clay Thompson Language Arts Curriculum

Word within the Word, by Michael Clay Thompson, is our middle and secondary level, vocabulary-building curriculum that is like no other and of which we are very proud. It is a complex, demanding, erudite and witty curriculum and schools and districts that have tried it are typically expanding their use of it.

It provides internalized, maximum, meaningful impact at the time students take PSATs and SATs. The SATs now include an extensive grammar section and students having both Word and Magic Lens in their background have a substantial advantage. The program makes the costly, time consuming, quick-fix/quick-forget tutorials of junior and senior high school years, things of the past.

Building Language and Caesar's English provide the elementary level curriculum.

To maximize the learning value of Word, the student books are designed to work in lock-step with The Magic Lens, high-level grammar series by the same author.

It is a program that uses etymology, not memorization. Latin and Greek stems are presented as a system of thinking, a way of building, analyzing, spelling, pronouncing, using and choosing words. In consequence students will know far more than the list of words encountered in this course—the tens of thousands of words which are not listed, but which are expressions of the system.

The series is extensively used in grades 8-12 and is also appropriate for academically motivated grades 6-7.

The Word program is intended as a weekly effort; built on a cumulative basis from Volume I. Every test reinforces every list. Through constant review, ever increasing familiarity is built. This is a tremendously wonderful undertaking that combines learning and fun for the students.

There are 30 lessons in each book; Volume I covers lessons 1-30; Volume II lessons 31-60, and Volume III lessons 61-90. In Volume I there are 500 stems, both Greek and Latin, followed by 250 words made of those stems. (The term "stems" includes all word pieces: prefixes, suffixes, and roots.)

Lessons include: a Stems List; a Sentence Page designed to show how example words should be used; an Analogies Page which promotes thinking and prepares students for SSAT's and SAT's; Mystery Spelling and Mystery Questions pages designed to be enjoyable activities to show and to practice that it is not just the word one studies that one knows; a Notes Page or Stem Close-up Page that takes a closer look at the list of stems and highlights special points or adds information; an Ideas Page that expands the brain's contact with the stems through activities of synthesis, divergence, analysis, evaluation, intuition, emotion and esthetics; an Inventions Page that gives the student the opportunity to create words just as scientists, writers and others do; and Flip Side Tests which give the definition and ask the term.

See sample lessons below
See a video clip of the author's sometimes controversial views on teaching Vocabulary.

Go to our Practice Workbooks series to see the new supplements to all our vocabulary and grammar programs. These low-cost, consumable workbooks provide in-depth instruction with 100 practice sentences for four-level analysis.

Support Groups for users of Michael Clay Thompson's Language Arts series
Teachers and educators in schools are invited to join the Group: MCTteachers

Michael Clay Thompson Course Packages
We have made available special packages of the curriculum so that educations can see samples of the books, and to help save money. Includes student book and teacher's manual for each stage of the curriculum: School Examination Packages