Language Vocabulary Lesson

Angela Lowry
03-31-09
TE 402 mini lesson/ language vocabulary
Sing Down th Moon

• While reading the story I would have the students write in their writing journal two action or descriptive words from each chapter and write down next the word the page number so they can find the sentence the word came from.
  
• When we are finished reading the book we will look at their lists, with 23 chapters they should have about 45-46 words.
  
• I will have the students pick 20 of those words and write them on a separate paper and each student will get a Thesaurus.
  
• Then they will look up the words and write down two more words that are synonyms.
  They will then rewrite the sentence that the original word came from with one of their new words. The new word should be underlined.
  
• I hope to have the students recognize that there are more words out there that can be used is similar situations. This will increase their vocabulary and make them better readers and be more aware of the words that they are reading. They will also learn that you can uses other sources to find similar words and meanings (dictionaries, thesaurus).
  

Some examples are
Chapter 1

Original word-steep
page number-1
two new words- towering, ascending
sentence- "Warm winds melted the snow and blue water gathered under the trees and ran through the meadows and down the towering barrancas."

Original word-scatter
page number-3
two new words-disperse, spread out
sentence-"When we left the trail it was fun to see them disperse out over the meadow to crop the first young grass, as though they had never eaten in their lives."