Vocabulary Virtuoso increases vocabulary, stimulates imagination, and boosts standards-based language arts skills. Each of the lessons teaches PSAT and/or SAT vocabulary words, which are made up of dynamic, real-life words students may encounter while reading or use in their writing.

Each lesson contains definitions, pronunciation keys, parts of speech, and alternate choices for each word made up of synonyms, idioms, and/or phrases. There are several activities, including a story involving students in a classroom setting.

Students complete a variety of exercises requiring critical reading and writing skills to contextualize the words. The exercises deliberately use other forms of the words as different parts of speech, so that students learn to recognize these forms as variations of the original words— further expanding their vocabulary and enabling them to use the words in more contexts. The correct spelling of vocabulary words are emphasized with the jumble activity that asks students to unscramble the word before writing the correct spelling.

Whether used in the traditional classroom, as a homeschooling resource, or for independent study, Vocabulary Virtuoso is a highly effective and fun vocabulary resource!

Primary Level - 160 Vocabulary Words and These Concepts:
Geography Skills - map skills and landforms such as continents, islands, mountains, and deserts
Creative Writing Skills - symbols and poetry such as haiku, chinquapin, limerick, and free verse

Elementary Level - 150 Vocabulary Words and These Concepts:
homonyms, homophones, homographs, hypothesis, key words, antonyms, hyperbole, fables, myths, folk tales, essay and speech writing

Middle School Level - 180 Vocabulary Words and These Concepts:
alliteration, idioms, fallacies in reasoning, foreign words and phrases, mythology, journalistic writing

PSAT-SAT Book 1 — 180 Vocabulary Words and These Concepts:
Literary - characterization, idioms, euphemisms, puns, aphorisms, jargon, allusions, irony, theme
Rhetorical - The Art of Persuasion in Speech and Writing, Using the Extended Simile to Write a Poem
History - The Renaissance, Renaissance artists

PSAT-SAT Book 2 — 180 Vocabulary Words and These Concepts:
ancient Greek history, ancient Greek drama, Commedia dell’ Arte, mythological allusions in Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s London, Renaissance artists, epistolary writing, historical fiction, U.S. musical history, types of literary conflict