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Mapping Your Identity: A Back-To-School Ice Breaker
Identify the unique personal attributes of your class members. Begin by viewing the Visual Thesaurus and discussing displayed attributes associated with famous American leaders. Using these identity maps as models, pupils generate nouns...
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When You Reeeaaallly Want to Say Something
Kids paraphrase an entry from The Elements of Style, and then revise a sentence. They use the Visual Thesaurus and find synonyms for the phrase very pretty, brainstorm a list of intensifiers (as alternatives to really and very), then...
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Using Words as a Way into Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief
Use the Visual Thesaurus to predict the subject matter of Rick Riordan's book The Lightning Thief. A pre-reading activity encourages middle schoolers to use context clues and word meaning to discover what the book is about. After they...
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Using a Thesaurus
Students discover how to use a thesaurus. In this language arts instructional activity, students explore thesauruses as they look up words and write sentences for the new words they encounter.
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Thesaurus Forage
Looking for a game that teaches students about how to use a thesaurus, and reinforces the concept of synonyms? Each player will have the opportunity to use their "tools" in this engaging lesson. They will use their thesauruses in order...
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The Visual Thesaurus and the SAT
Demonstrate strategies for tackling unfamiliar vocabulary words in preparation for the SAT. Using Visual Thesaurus computer software, middle and high schoolers interpret contextual clues, solve sample sentence completion questions, and...
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Rooting One's Way to Meaning
Discover the Virtual Thesaurus with your class. They use the Virtual Thesaurus to assist them in an inquiry-based approach to discovering the meanings of some common Latin and Greek roots. Each child then teaches a particular root and...
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Introducing Synonyms to Early Writers
Upper elementary schoolers examine the concept of synonyms and how using a variety of vocabulary through synonyms can expand their writing skills. They revise a paragraph using synonyms located on the Visual Thesaurus and participate in...
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Using a Thesaurus
In this writing worksheet, students read about how to use a thesaurus. Students also replace a word, using a thesaurus, in each of five sentences.
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Thesaurus Power
Give your class the advantage of Thesaurus Power! They will use a thesaurus to understand word meanings and relationships. They focus on how a thesaurus functions and how it gives the entry word, definition, synonyms, antonyms, and part...
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Word Reference Materials
A class discussion on reference materials opens up a lesson on how to use these important resources. They discover that dictionaries, glossaries, and thesauruses are called word reference resources, and they practice using them. The...
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Using Descriptive Language
Students examine the use of adjectives in a product review, then write their own descriptive review. In this writing and word usage lesson, students first analyze the choice of adjectives in a New York Times article about the iPhone,...
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Improving Descriptive Writing: Painting an Original Picture
Descriptive writing is rich in sensory appeals and paints pictures in the minds of readers. Show young writers how to use an on-line thesaurus and a cliché website to create fresh, descriptive writing. The presentation ends with an...
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Learning Vocabulary by Using Reference Materials
Finding engaging ways to help your middle schoolers build their vocabulary is not easy to do. The lesson presented here offers a great way to motivate them to build vocabulary by making it into a game. Teams of pupils use a dictionary...
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Seeing Words in a New Way
What's the best resource to use when looking up words? Use Visual Thesaurus to see a word's meaning. The class accesses the interactive website and then compares and contrasts the difference between using a traditional dictionary and the...
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A Victorian Vocabulary Challenge
Introduce your high schoolers to some tough vocabulary. No, I'm not talking about the SAT list! Revisit Victorian literature to find tricky words we still use today. Using the Visual Thesaurus, learners will preview vocabulary in a quote...
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Synonyms
Use this resource to help learners improve the quality of their writing. Discuss the importance of using synonyms for commonly used words. Class members also learn to use a thesaurus, and revise a writing sample to include more...
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Clicking Your Way to Poetry: Composing Word Association Poems with the Visual Thesaurus
Use a Visual Thesaurus to compose word association poems. Discuss poetry and word association, create word maps, then practice creating poems based on playful word associations. A perfect way to celebrate "Poem in Your Pocket Day" (April...
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Heroic Vocabulary: Using Decoding Strategies and Thesaurus
Develop the decoding skills of your middle and high schoolers. Scholars participate in a classroom activity that requires them to decode a word with a prefix and suffix. They apply the skill of breaking the word into parts of meaning as...
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Using the Thesaurus: Synonyms
in this synonyms worksheet, learners use a thesaurus to look up 12 words. Students then read four possible choices and circle the word that is not a synonym for the given word.
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Using Adjectives to Write
Fifth graders examine how to write a story using comparative and superlative adjectives. They listen to the book "Pig Pigger Piggest" by Rick Walton and identify the comparative adjectives used in the story. Students then write a rough...
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It's Opposite Day
Celebrate Opposite Day by using a Visual Thesaurus to match words to their antonyms. They match a list of vocabulary words to their antonym counterparts using the Visual Thesaurus, and then they play Antonym Bingo with the words from...
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Vocabulary Development
What is a root word? What is a prefix? Suffix? Use these questions to spark a discussion amongst your language art learners. Then, start by writing the word irresistible on the board and have teams of learners attempt to create new words...
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The Power of Words in Charlotte's Web
"How can a few good words save a pig's life?" Posed with this question, your ELD students explore E.B. White's Charlotte's Web in a meaningful, valuable way. By analyzing specific word choice from the book, especially the excerpts...