Vocabulary is in the Air

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                                                             Living in 3rd Grade ~ Vocabulary is in the Air                                                               
                                                                                              by
                                                                                  Figurski KIDDLES
       (reposted from Figurski Wiki March 22, 2011) (reposted again from Donna O'Donnell Figurski's Blog)


Our language is made up of many words. Some convey the most simple message.

                                                                                                           The dog ran down the street.

Certainly that sentence gives the reader a specific picture, but not a colorful one. It leaves a lot to the imagination of the reader who is expected to fill in the missing parts. The sentence borders on boring.

By playing with words, children are experimenting with ways to make their language more vivid. They use words to create movies in their heads. This will surely result in more fascinating writing that will  jump off the page. In order to accomplish that task, children need to choose more picturesque words. Look at this sentence.

                                            The brown dog galloped down the crooked street.

It’s more vivid and easily allows a clearer image to be conjured.

I asked my class to play with words. I gave them a set of stimulus words (in bold) and asked to think of more visual words.
Look at their work below.

ran — dashed, raced, rushed, sprinted, zoomed, galloped, bolted
picked — plucked, snatched, yanked, grabbed
jumped — leapt, hopped, skipped
flew — glided
yelled — screamed, scolded, yelped, screeched, hollered, shouted, snapped, barked

For HomeFun, they worked on the following words.
walked --
shook --
said --
laughed --
cried --
washed --
jumped --
chirped --

Go Ahead! Try it!

First let the words spill out of your head. When you can think of no more, head over to the thesaurus.

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(Clip Art compliments of Bing.)

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