Sagacious, sophisticated, and sedulous; these seem like five-buck words to me! There’s a great article in the April/May 2013 issue of Teaching Young Children that addresses 50-cent words. The author, Molly F. Collins, begins the article “A teacher once told me, ‘Don’t use a 50-cent word when a 5-cent word will do.’”
Collins, of course, rebukes this notion, stressing the importance of introducing new words and concepts to children of all ages. The article includes preschoolers dialoguing about literature-related word investigations that include unruly (in reference to hair), predator, and splay. Very cute!
What memorable word-related discussions did you have with students this year? Funny ones are fine too!
Curious as ever!
Diane
Homophones! Oh, my goodness, these words always confuse the students!
When working on sight words, they learn the word “for.” When matching numbers to number words, they learn “four.” So . . . When we do Daily News, some students are quick to point out that I misspelled the word “for” (thinking that it should be “four”).
Whenever homophones pop up, I stop and take the time to explain them.
Other words (and letters) that have caused issues when reading and/or writing:
need/kneed
see/sea/Cc
rain/reign
you/Uu
be/bee/Bb
Has anyone else experienced this??? 😉
At the end of the school year I read the book A Kiss Good-bye by Audrey Penn to teach changes that take place in our lives. I introduced the word change before the story by sharing the two meanings for this multiple meaning word. Multiple meaning words continuously occur throughout our days at school.
I challenge my 4th-graders to enjoy words and the way language is structured. I tell them a story from my own childhood: my brother found the word “rhinorrhea” in the dictionary and my family had a laugh-fest at the dinner table as we talked about it and other “rhino” words. (Yes, we are geeks and proud of it!) That always starts interest in the dictionary, and students inevitably ask if they can read the dictionary during independent reading time. 🙂 Then we start a year-long collection of “fancy” words. The students love to use them in writing. In the end, vocabulary becomes a fun adventure instead of boring work!
Pat, what a great story; even funnier when I discovered that “rhinorrhea” is a fancy word for a runny nose! (I won’t confess to my initial guess at the word’s meaning!)Thanks so much for sharing and promoting a love of words.
My kindergartners have so many different words for vomit, and the English language learners especially are confused, so I demonstrate for them! So we learn vomit=puke=regurgitate=throw your cookies=throw up,etc.