Fantastic program!
Community Review for Membean
My Take
When a colleague steered me toward Membean last year, I was intrigued. I got to play with it a little at the NCTE conference in Columbus, Ohio, and after only a few minutes of interacting with the program (and talking to the terrific staff), I knew that I wanted to pilot Membean in my room. What I love about this software is that it's easy to tell that the developers researched "best methods" when it comes to vocabulary acquisition. The underpinnings of the methods are sound, and that is a huge deal for me. Visually, the interface is very appealing and it encourages the kids to interact with the new words in a number of ways, from paragraphs that reinforce the word definitions in context to a section that dissects each word into its prefix, suffix and root word. There are sample sentences pulled from authentic sources. There are sound and video clips to see the new words in even more contexts. Synonyms. Antonyms. Mnemonic hooks. I'm telling you, in three decades of teaching language arts, I have never seen such a robust vocabulary program. It's the best piece of teaching software I have ever used. I highly recommend Membean.
How I Use It
Membean recommends using their training tools at least three times per week for 15 minutes per session. I follow these guidelines and have been really happy with the results. Many of my students "low-key like this program" (Actual comment from a reluctant LA student!) and that alone is saying a lot. My students really came to like the routine of starting our Monday and Wednesday class periods with 15 minutes of Membean word study. I found they didn't even grumble much when they had to do the third session on Friday on their own. :-)