8.2.1 Importance and Uses of Workbook

• Individualized Schemes of Work: The most marked area of development in the use of resources and materials has been the widespread use of individualized schemes of work based either on computer packages or on workbook. In both cases, one of the skills involved in the effective use of these materials relates to the organization of how and when pupils use them, and how and when they receive feedback on their progress.
• Feedback: One advantage of workbooks is that these are designed to be self- explanatory and often feedback is provided in the form of correct answers and help can be provided for pupils in difficulties.
• Teachers' assistance: Teachers' assistance is required from time to time. By use of work book students do not waste time wondering what to do next in a particular situation. Teacher can organize a lesson so that different groups are working on different tasks, ranging from tasks involving minimal teacher contact to those involving a great deal of contact.
• Encourage New Learning: The task giving to the students encourage new learning. This involves not simply the learning of new material, but also creative investigation and application of the topic area to life outside the school (e.g. listing cubes, spheres and cylinders that can be found in the pupil's living room, or exploring the earliest recollections of the pupil's parents about when they first went to school.
• Building Thinking Skills: Building Thinking Skills provides highly effective verbal and nonverbal reasoning activities to improve vocabulary, reading, writing, math, logic, and figural-spatial skills, as well as visual and auditory processing. This exceptional skill set provides a solid foundation for academic excellence and success on any assessment test.The activities are sequenced developmentally in workbook. Each skill (for example, classifying) is presented first in the semi-concrete figural-spatial form and then in the abstract verbal form. Children learn to analyze relationships between objects, between words, and between objects and words as they:Observe, recognize, and describe characteristics. Distinguish similarities and differences. ✓Identify and complete sequences, classifications, and. analogies.These processes help children develop superior thinking and communication skills that lead to deeper content learning in all subjects. Speaking, pronunciation and the explanation of difficult grammar are best done in the classroom, to make time for these it is sometimes necessary to use a textbook exercise for homework instead of/ as well as the workbook.
• Student's Assessment: Work book is particularly useful in developing students' organizational skills and power of commitment to meet the demands made on them. Pupil progs and previous learning can be assessed and this often involves consolidation and practice type tasks, or preparing for a test by revising.

Examples of work books

1. Focus on Phonics

Focus on Phonics is a series of phonics workbooks.The series helps improve spelling and phonic skills for students who have reading levels 1-4. Series highlights

Focus on Phonics uses a word-pattern approach

• Students learn groups of words easily by seeing and hearingtheir similarities and differences.
• Students learn reasons why words are spelled and pronounced the way they are.
• Students learn new words by reading them in isolation and in context, and then by writing them.
• Students who have difficulty remembering words gain confidence in being able to use their phonics skills to decode words they can't recognize automatically.

Components include:

• Workbook 1 - Sounds and Names of Letters
• Workbook 2A- Short Vowel Sounds
• Workbook 3- Long Vowel Sounds
• Workbook 4 Other Vowel Sounds and Consonant Spellings

Teacher's editions with step-by-step instructions are available for each level.

2. How to Teach Spelling and How to Spell 1, 2, 3, 4

How to Teach Spelling is a comprehensive resource manual with corresponding How to Spell workbooks that provide a structured method to plan spelling lessons. Students using this series should have some reading readiness skills and be able to name and recognize the letters of the alphabet. The workbooks are grade-level specific:

• How to Spell I (Grade 1)
• How to Spell 2 (Grades 2-3)
• How to Spell 3 (Grades 4-6)
• How to Spell 4 (Grades 7-12)

The workbooks teach spelling rules and generalizations, provide space for copying words, and indicate when students should write words, phrases, and/or sentences from dictation. Each lesson builds on previous lessons; phrases and sentences for dictation include words testing the rules that have already been learned.

Sight words are also assigned and incorporated into phrases and sentences for dictation. The manual also offers a suggested teaching method and typical lesson plan.

This series is helpful for tutors who want their students to learn to recognize the sounds in the English language, to decode words, and to spell words correctly by relying on spelling rules and patterns rather than on memory.