Words are the currency of our present and future time. We teachers are the rich, the ones whose substantial word bank account gives us all the benefits of a favoured class of people. Unfortunately, many of our students have emerged from young childhood homes where reading is not a preferred activity and where speaking in a clear, articulate manner is not part of their culture.

It is most important that we understand that our main task beyond teaching the curriculum is to impart our own skill with language and words and therefore provide the access, the keys to the reading/writing process we have enjoyed.

Once our students understand the language of literacy so that both story and information are revealed to their young minds, once they can see through this glass clearly, they will embrace the books and the ideas to the extent of their natural potential which, fortified by knowledge of words and excited by the meaning of what they are learning, will be much more extensive than we have understood or experienced.

Do not take for granted that your students understand what you say. Check their word knowledge and continuously define and explain words with images, pictures and examples. Be their living dictionaries, explaining meaning to them in context of what they are reading at a level of their understanding.

Require each student to set up a personal wordbook of the words they learn, full of meaning and illustration. Explain how this book must grow with them throughout your year in school and for all the years to follow.

Set this book of the written and spoken language they learn as their most important treasure, their bank account for the future.

The students in our class today are in the graduating classes of the 21^st century. It is hard for us to picture what their world will demand of them as workers, since most of the jobs and tasks they will do have not yet been invented. However, there are certain things that are clear. They will need to be inventive and independent users of the electronic communication technologies of their time. The vehicles of transport on these highways and flyways of the future will be built out of words. The Internets and webs of the 21^st century will use words to exchange ideas, to talk, to buy, to sell and to build on a global market.

Therefore as future thinkers about our students needs, we can do them important and critical service by making them word learners and high valuers of words, language and reading. The Language Box Program in concept and method will give you the vehicle to do this for your students. What is most exciting is that you can begin at any age, from preschool to senior high.

Further, it is often the case that in special education classes, many of our students are suffering from language deficits and begin to fall behind in the curriculum because they cannot understand the written texts and the spoken language for their grades. Addressing the gap in language skills by specifically teaching the meaning of words they do not know often works wonders in helping them to learn the subjects they are struggling to master without the benefit of understanding their teacher's instruction. For these students, the Language Box Method contains survival skills of the first order.

A second skill lies behind the first and usually goes unnoticed. This is the ability to pay attention to print and to oral instruction related to words and the telling of stories. Children who have little early experience in being read to come to school less ready to provide this attention. As the years progress without the same level of practice in the discipline of paying attention as their classmates, they fall further behind in a skill critical to their school success. We would not expect the same level of skill from an untrained young athlete in running a race as one who had coaching and practice; nor should we expect the same level of readiness to pay attention in all our students. This skill needs to be built deliberately into our course of study. As teachers, we need to pay attention to the skill of paying attention.

I look forward to sharing some procedures and success stories later in this book.