Thursday, January 08, 2015

OLW Goes to School


Do
Live
Try
Brave
Exercise
Respect
Friendly
Family
Decide
Moderation
Hope
Balance

This year, I have invited my students to choose their own One Little Word. The above is a list of some of the words my students and the other adults who work in or visit my classroom have chosen.

I am impressed with the perceptiveness of some of my students. They didn't take this choosing lightly, and their words are ones they will be able to live into and grow with throughout the year.

Today, we spent some time with dictionaries and thesauruses looking up and brainstorming synonyms, antonyms and related words.

Perfect timing for this book to show up:




The Right Word
by Jen Bryant
illustrated by Melissa Sweet
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2014

I can't wait to introduce my students to Peter Mark Roget, a man whose passion for list-making and words began at the age of 8 and resulted in the most amazing resource book of language -- a book that has remained in print from 1852 until today.

The thesauruses we have in our classroom are alphabetical. I'd love to be able to get ahold of some that are topical, the way Roget originally organized his.

At any rate, this will be the perfect book at the perfect time as my students consider the meanings and nuances of their OLWs for the year.


2 comments:

  1. This is an amazing mentor text to include with the OLW lesson. I will have to get myself a copy. :)

    Jennifer
    Mrs. Laffin’s Laughings

    ReplyDelete
  2. I read this book to my students, too, when we were working on OLW. Great minds...

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