The Herons have been considering the craft of writing in recent mini-lessons. We read Ralph Fletcher's short piece about "Reading Like a Writer" which directs children to read (and re-read) in order to discover how an author "works her magic" in our head. Together, we've considered the simile, metaphor, strong verbs, alliteration, rhyme, and idiom as ways that an author constructs a world.
We've also begun a closer look at vocabulary and the power of finding just the right word. At the begining of Beowulf, Hrogar the king instructs the story teller to "Unleash your word hoard." We might just say, "tell the story" but there's something wonderful in the image of releasing words to creat a story. There's also something wonderful in the act of collecting words. Very quicly, the Herons have filled a sheet with words that strike our fancy and they've begun to pop up during read aloud to add a word they've just heard.
This last bit is crucial. I think that far too often, children don't engage with new language they hear. New words roll off of them like water off a duck. A rich vocabulary doesn't happen by accident. Instead, children have to notice new words, wonder and ask about them. Don't shy away from using complex language around your child -- encourage them to stop and ask about words. It's habit forming. Once students start to absorb and use new vocabulary, they find more and more of it to stash away.
Today, we created a magnetic poetry type activity that focusses on "harvest." I taught children about the different parts of speech and how to use a thesaurus to find homonyms. Then pairs of students brainstormed adjectives, adverbs, nouns or verbs (I took care of the articles, conjunctions and prepositions) that we could use in a "word hoard" for other poets to use.
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