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."