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Break Out Your Dictionaries!
Saturday, October 16 is Dictionary
Day (G), which celebrates the birthday of Noah Webster. In "'On
the Lookout for Language': Children as Language Detectives" (E) from
the January 2003 Language Arts, a teacher researcher describes how she invited her students to be detectives on the lookout for language. The ReadWriteThink
lesson An
Alternative to Testing: Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster (E)
provides another option for exploring vocabulary -- and a nice alternative for
Halloween costumes.
"Assisting
Struggling Readers in Building Vocabulary and Background Knowledge" (M)
from the May 2001 Voices from the Middle provides structured, student-centered
alternatives to vocabulary instruction. "Defining
Moment: Teaching Vocabulary to Unmotivated Students" (S) from the July 2003 English Journal offers
the story of a teacher who abandoned workbooks for more effective instruction
in her classroom. "Using the Devil's Dictionary to Teach Definitions" (C) from the May 2004 Teaching
English in the Two-Year College invites students to write creative, witty
definitions of their own.
Reading
Horror and Suspense Fiction
During the week of October 17–23, 2004, celebrate
Teen Read Week (G) by focusing on horror in books, Web sites, and movies.
The week-long event is sponsored by the American
Library Association, focuses on the theme, “IT’S ALIVE! @ your library®.” No
matter what age your students, it's a great time of year for horror and suspense
fiction.
"Horror:
To Gratify, Not Edify" (E) from Language Arts examines the appeal of R. L. Stine’s
Goosebumps series for young readers as a means of exploring the pleasure of the horror genre. Older students can investigate connections between the life and writings of Edgar Allan Poe in the ReadWriteThink lesson Modeling Reading and Analysis Processes with the Works of Edgar Allan Poe (M). The ReadWriteThink lesson Ghosts and Fear in Language Arts: Exploring the Ways Writers Scare Readers (S) focuses on the craft of writing and reading frightening and scary stories.
"Who
Killed Annabel Lee? Writing about Literature in the Composition Classroom" (C)
from the January
2003 College English uses Poe's famous poem to invite students
to construct their own interpretations of literary works.
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