DVD

Students will learn about resources they can use to improve their writing. They will discover that they can look at the work of other writers, use books like a dictionary or thesaurus, use writing techniques like rhyme, alliteration, and onomatopoeia, organize ideas and facts with outlines or story maps. Proofreading tools are also discussed.

Professor Plot, the zany publisher of Wordswork, has given his editors a unique challenge: Showcase four different types of writing, each with its own purpose and audience, in the upcoming issue of the magazine.

Expository writing emerges as the theme for this issue of Wordswork, and the editors are on a quest to fill the magazine with writing that informs or provides facts. The team quickly realizes that expository writing can be anything from a school science project to a letter to the president!

Viewers learn the importance of prewriting (thinking and planning), how to transform ideas into a written draft, different types of sentences (lead, topic, etc.) editing, proofreading, and publishing.

Viewers will learn about the story-writing process. Discusses character, setting, plot, the ending, and looks at ways to organize ideas through the use of character webs and story maps. Examines character and plot development, diologue, and descriptive details as a tool for making a story interesting.

'People, places and things' emerge as our young editors' theme for the next issue of their literary magazine, launching them on a mission to identify and learn all about nouns. In Nouns, young viewers will enjoy following along with the Wordswork team as they discover that nouns can be common or proper, singular or plural.

The Wordswork staff decides on an action theme as they prepare the latest issue of their literary magazine, and that can mean only one special group of words: verbs.

The Wordswork staff is on a quest to fill their magazine with those groups of words we all know and love: sentences. Their job sounds simple enough, but little do they know that a sentence isn't just any old group of words. To be considered a sentence, those words must convey a complete thought and contain both a subject and a predicate.

The Wordswork staff is on a mission to tackle those tiny symbols that help make our writing more clear: punctuation! The team digs through the writing samples submitted to their literary magazine to uncover the rules of punctuation.

Choosing stories for the next issue of their magazine, the Wordswork staff decides to focus on words that tell us more about other words.

Throughout their lives, successful people use information to make decisions, solve problems and communicate more effectively. Based on information literacy standards, this series helps students learn to navigate our complex, information-rich world through the development of critical research skills and the ability to access, evaluate and use information.

Presents the basics of expository writing, from composing the introduction and the thesis statement to assembling body paragraphs to writing an effective conclusion.

Writers, ranging from a sportswriter for a school newspaper to a student working on a research project, demonstrate the processes of developing a focused thesis statement as well as structuring and writing solid introductory, supporting and concluding paragraphs.

This program suggests strategies to help discern the appropriate tone for a piece of writing based on purpose and audience. Student writers, ranging from an avid cyclist on a fundraising campaign for an upcoming school trip to a writer communicating with her fellow club members on the Internet, use formal and informal writing to accomplish their task.

In this program, a young writer must compose a convincing letter to the school news paper to win his classmates' votes for student council, while another writer is challenged to research and write a supporting argument in favor of an issue that she feels strongly against.