Books in Total Basic Skills series

The high-interest stories and illustrations in this book will certainly motivate your students to learn every aspect of sequencing while still having fun. The activities in this book teach sequencing concepts such as following directions,sequencing events, before and after, first and next, and more. They are written in a variety of ways to keep your students interested.

Too often map skills focus on memorizing country borders, names, and capitals. With our rapidly changing world, what is learned one year may become obsolete the next. Map Skills, Grade 6 has a more practical approach. It focuses on the natural geography of the world, why maps are made like they are, and how to use them to find your way around. Students will learn to understand map symbols such as the legend, scale, directional compass, and grids. The will learn to differentiate between physical, political, thematic, and direction maps and how each type is useful for different information. Political boundaries and country names may change, but the skills learned in this book will last a lifetime.

Go beyond memorizing names and borders. Explore new routes to learning about maps. Map Skills - Grade 2 journeys from reviewing the globe and compass rose to using a map scale and locating countries within continents. Your students will experience numerous and varied adventures using map symbols, map keys, and map scales as they follow the ice-cream truck, help Sam Super Spy complete a secret mission, go the distance in a bike-a-thon, and even travel across the United States to join some children on exciting adventures. Your students will have a wonderful time learning and exploring!

Communication is essential in daily life, and writing is an important aspect of communication. Give your second graders a solid writing foundation through Basic Writing Skills. The book builds on the sentence skills taught in the first grade bookand expands on those skills to develop in students the ability to write grammatically correct, descriptive sentences. The fun illustrations will hold your students' interest while the engaging activities teach them to write clearly and concisely.

The high-interest stories and illustrations in this book will certainly motivate your students to learn every aspect of sequencing while still having fun. The activities in this book teach sequencing concepts such as following directions,sequencing events, following a sequence, and more. They are written in a variety of ways to keep your students interested.

Communication is essential in daily life, and writing is an important aspect of communication. Give your first graders a solid writing foundation through Basic Writing Skills. The book focuses primarily on teaching studentsto write sentences effectively. The fun illustrations will hold your students' interest while the engaging activities teach them to write clearly and concisely.

The activities in Compare and Contrast, Grades 5-6 are designed to improve students' reading comprehension skills and to give them the skills necessary for finding similarities and differences in text. With a variety of fun and instructional formats,teachers can provide an introduction, reinforcement, or independent practice for this cornerstone skill. Lessons are linked to other areas of the curriculum such as math, science, social studies, and language arts. Use these selections forindependent practice or whole-group instruction, Have students work with partners or teams to complete the more challenging activities. Another idea is to place the activity sheets in a center and reproduce the answer key for self-checking.

Dictionary skills are the building blocks for using all reference materials. However, many students are not confident using dictionaries. Building Dictionary Skills familiarizes students with the information included in dictionaries, as well as tools to help them quickly locate words and find meanings. Practicing dictionary skills will help students effectively use dictionaries to verify spellings, look up new words, and learn new meanings.The enjoyable activities, puzzles, codes, and riddles in Building Dictionary Skills introduce the most essential reference skills supported by the NCTE and IRA standards. The reproducible worksheets provide progressive instruction of topics such as alphabetizing, guide words, and phonetic spellings. Students will learn to look up words, pronounce words, and understand dictionary entries. Dictionary skills are strengthened by specific activities on parts of speech, syllabic divisions, prefixes and suffixes, and multiple definitions. This workbook will help your students learn to successfully use any dictionary, including The McGraw-Hill Children's Dictionary.

Story Elements, Grade 1-2 is designed to introduce young readers and writers to tools that authors use as they create stories. The activities explore the concepts of character, setting, problem (conflict), and plot. The book is divided into sections for econcept. Within each section, the activities progress from easiest to more challenging. In addition, some exercises incorporate a cross-curricular element to help reinforce reading skills for other subject areas.Once students have been introduced to these basic concepts, reinforce their understanding by identifying characters, settings, problems, and plot in stories shared during storytime and in reading groups.

Communication is essential in daily life, and writing is an important aspect of communication. Give your third graders a solid writing foundation through Basic Writing Skills. The book builds on the sentence skills taught in the second grade bookand expands on those skills to develop in students the ability to write grammatically correct, descriptive sentences. They will also learn to brainstorm effectively, and they will begin to write paragraphs.The fun illustrations will hold your students' interest while the engaging activities teach them to write clearly and concisely.