Text Set: Word Study and Vocabulary

 Texts for this Text Set have been posted daily on Instagram. Follow @TextSets there to get daily updates!

We want to have joy and inquiry at the heart of our word study and vocabulary work. This week, I'll share a set of books that will celebrate words in various ways. Word study cannot happen without understanding the power and impact of words. 

The Great Big Animal Search Book is a fun book, and at first glance I had no idea all that was in here connected to words and vocabulary. This is a giant search book with really fun illustrations and so many facts about animals. It is a book readers can spend hours and hours with. AND it ALSO introduces readers to a variety of collective nouns (a WADDLE of penguins, a HERD of cows). Such a great way to discover the fun in collective nouns and to explore new vocabulary in the process. 

The Invisible Alphabet gives readers a unique way to think about words. This book is full of words that are invisible--things you don't see (such as AIR).  Reading through this book and then playing with other types of alphabet lists you could create based on a unique category like invisible would be great fun!

I love Ambitious Girl and they way that it takes a single word--ambitious-- and defines and expands on the definition through the whole of the book. Thinking deeply about the perfect word and all that it can be in descriptions and actions is worthy of conversation. 

This book could be used throughout the year for so many things. Just as the previous book explored one word, Dictionary for a Better World explores and deeply digs into several words using poems, quotes, and more. And each word fits under the topic umbrella of a better world. I want young readers to go beyond a dictionary definition of a word and to really think beyond a one-phrase definition. This book invites readers to think about powerful words in a variety of ways to build understanding. Discussing each word as well as its inclusion in the book's theme will add to any word study conversation.  

Of course you'd have to spend weeks with Have I Ever Told You Black Lives Matter before you brought it into word study. The book is powerful and says so much. The fact that there are only words and no illustrations is powerful. The way the words are set on the page is powerful.  So many Black voices are shared in this book.  A perfect book for talking about the power of words, the word we remember, the power of quotes, whose words have power, whose words do we study and remember, etc. could all be important conversations using this book as an anchor. 

This week's books were linked at Cover to Cover Children's Bookstore. If you are looking for a fabulous children's bookstore to support, this is an amazing one. We are lucky to have them in Central Ohio!

You can find a downloadable pdf of this list at frankisibberson.com. 

Word Game Wednesday!

In the middle of the week, we break from our regular word study routines for Word Game Wednesday.

Over the course of many years, I have collected lots of word games. They never got played until I started Word Game Wednesday. The games all live together on top of the shelves that have our word study/word play books and wordless books. They are not available for indoor recess, only for Word Game Wednesday. That keeps them in better condition and a little more special.

Some of the games date back to my childhood. I brought them from the game cupboard back home!

I have sets of magnetic words and magnetic poetry for those who want to go "old school" on a cookie sheet!

The rest have been added over the course of YEARS. (Your Amazon cart might start smoking....stop before it blows up!)

In addition to Tile Lock Scrabble, we have multiple boards and a big ziplock of letters.

Appletters and Bananagrams are perennial favorites.

Students build stories with Rory's Story Cubes or the StoryWorld cards.

I have no idea where this came from! The students have made up their own rules.
Red coins are consonants, green coins are vowels.

Last Letter and After Words work basically the same way. In Last Letter, you have a hand of cards that have pictures on them. To start, you lay a card down and name something you can see in the pictures. If the starting word is "robot," then every player scans their cards for something in one of the pictures that starts with "T," the last letter of "robot." They name that thing on their card, putting it down on the pile. Then players have to find something in the pictures on their cards that starts with the last letter of that word, and so on.

After Words has a board that shows the "last letter" currently in play. (It also has a timer, but ours has never worked.) The cards each player holds have categories, so if it's your turn and the last letter was "s," you might use your category card "weather" to play "snow." The game board marker would move to "w" and the next player would look at their categories for a word that starts with "w."

Tapple and 5 Second Rule (be sure you get the Jr. edition!) Are basically the same. Tapple has category cards, and when the first one is turned over, the red timer in the middle of the board is hit and the first player has a short amount of time to name something in that category. After they name it, they press down the letter it started with and reset the timer. The next players have to name something in that category with a letter that hasn't been used yet. If you can't think of something before the timer goes off, you're out. Last one still able to name things in that category wins. 5 Second Rule has a crazy "rain stick" 5 second timer that totally messes with your ability to name the item(s) in the category on the card that's drawn.

Rhyme Out! and Blurt! can both get a little loud. (Who am I kidding? What with the timers going off and the spirited collaboration and competition, ALL of Word Game Wednesday can be a little loud. But it's all good!) In Rhyme Out!, each card has a hint (such as "rhymes with snow") and the first player who can say all three answers to the clues wins the cards. The clues might be (and I'm totally making these up) "what you do when your nose is stuffy, what a plant does if you water it, and what the water in a river does." Blow, grow, flow! With Blurt!, a clue is read and the first person or team to blurt out the correct answer gets to move their maker around the board.

Word Dominoes have pictures on the ends of the dominoes and I'm sure there are rules, but we usually just play by working together to try to match up two pictures that go together in a way, aiming to use all the dominoes to build the biggest chain possible. Haikubes haven't taken off yet, as you might imagine with all the other flashier/noisier options available!

Word A Round has round cards with the letters for a short word in the blue inner circle, the letters for a medium word in the red middle circle, and the letters for a long word in the black outer circle. The backs of the cards are blue, red, or black so you know which ring to look at. All the letters are in order for the word in that ring, but there are no clues that tell players where the word starts or stops or which way around the ring it is spelled. This game takes a good knowledge of prefixes, word endings, and common spelling patterns.

Dabble is a Scrabble-like game with a couple of twists. Each player gets 20 tiles and 2 minutes to make five words -- one each of 6-, 5-, 4-, 3-, and 2-letter words. If you make all five words in 2 minutes you get 25 points in addition to all the points on the letter tiles you used.

We have one digital game -- Free Rice. You can imagine with all the other loud and active options, this one doesn't get chosen much. But most weeks there is at least one person who either gets shut out of their first choice or who wants a quieter, more solitary choice.

A couple of last thoughts -- it doesn't make me very popular, but at least every other week I pull a small group to work on spelling patterns during this time. I make sure not to pull the same kids repeatedly. I've also started alternating Word Game Wednesday on Wednesdays and Thursdays so that the reading intervention kids who are pulled on Wednesdays don't miss it every week. As with any routine worth putting in place, you've got to make it work for you and your students.

Have fun!

Word Game Wednesday

Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is not path and leave a trail.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Word Game Wednesday

What would you like to do?

Play Word Around? Rhyme Out? Bananagrams? Do not

dawdle; find a group and go

tinker with words! Play Scrabble; observe where

the

words intersect, criss-crossing a path

of letters that may

lead

to unexpected mergers. Perhaps go

online instead

and play Free Rice, where

you earn kernels of rice for nuggets of knowledge. There

is

no

guarantee, but Word Game Wednesday could have been the path

that led us to be homophone, homonym, and

homograph hunters. Words open the world. Using them, we leave

a

splendiferous trail.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2018

Newish Books That Have Fun With Words

During the first week of the school year, I read the book Animal Soup asking my kids if they liked words. They seemed confused. "What do you mean? Do we like words?"  I explained that I loved playing with words and the fun that writers had with words. I liked when writers did clever things with words. A few nodded while others tilted their heads not quite sure what I was getting at.

Some of the work we'll do in word study this year revolves around figurative language and using various parts of speech. The way I learned about figurative language and parts of speech was not joyful.  We learned about it in an isolated way and learned to recognize and name it but we didn't see the fun or joy in the clever ways people used words. Don't get me wrong,  I LOVED diagramming sentences (it was actually one of my biggest talents in middle and high school) BUT I never actually transferred any of that to using the language or to finding joy in the words and phrases that made up the sentences.

So I've been thinking hard about how to best move my students from not really thinking about words to finding joy in them to paying attention to the use of words in writing. So many days I find myself looking at my shelves of books, pulling collections of books based on some conversations we've had in class. These last few days I've pulled the following newish books to add to our conversations around words.

Words by Christopher Niemann

This small chunky book is mostly visual and is a great celebration of words of all kinds. This is one kids spend a lot of time with and one that they go back to again and again.

Nothing Rhymes with Orange by Adam Rex

Not only is this a fun book that explores fun fruit words but the character of Orange (who has no place in a rhyming story) is hilarious!

A Greyhound a Groundhog by Emily Jenkins

This book plays with just a few words to tell a story and is fun to read aloud.

Guess Who, Haiku by Deanna Caswell and Bob Shea

These are fun riddles written in Haiku. This one is fun to read and guess the answers to these riddles. After reading a few kids will want to try writing some of their own.

Yaks Yak: Animal Word Pairs by Linda Su Park

What a fun way to look at words that can be used as different parts of speech--lots of noun-verb combinations to create fun scenes.  

Blue Sky White Stars by Sarvinder Naberhaus and Kadir Nelson

The brilliance in the way the author uses words invites conversation. This book is powerful and gorgeous and gives readers so much to think about, even though there are so few words.

It's Not Jack and the Beanstalk by Josh Funk

Although this one does not focus on word play, kids definitely notice the fun in the author's use of words in several places.

This House Once by Deborah Freedman

The partnered language in this book may invite readers to try describing things in new ways. The author says a great deal in short, beautiful phrases.

Fun Times in Word Study!

Last summer, Take Away the A by Michael Escoffier was my fun new Word Study book for the year. I wasn't the only one who got jazzed up by it. I handed it off to Carol Wilcox when I arrived at the Denver airport so she could use it in PD and then mail it back to me.

Here's this year's fun new Word Study book by Michael Escoffier:

Where's the Baboon?
by Michael Escoffier
illustrated by Kris Di Giacomo
Enchanted Lion Books, October 2015
review copy provided by the publisher

The entire text of this book is pretty much a series of questions. You can answer the question by looking at the letters in red, or by studying the illustrations. In the first spread, the mice let us know we are heading to school to search for hidden words. Our first question is, "Who is the headmaster? (You guessed it -- hamster!)

It's amazing how much the reader learns about the animals and their school just through a series of questions. And I probably shouldn't have been as surprised as I was by the ending. (Hint -- the plot line is circular, and the title is a part of the story. Also, someone is having a birthday...)

This book will have readers and word-lovers looking for words-inside-words and writing stories consisting of questions.

Fun times in Word Study!

Take Away the A

Take Away the A
by Michaël Escoffier (author of Brief Thief, Me First! and The Day I Lost My Superpowers)

illustrated by Kris Di Giacomo

Enchanted Lion Books, due out September 12, 2014

review copy provided by the publisher

You will want this book. I guarantee it.

Best. Alphabet Book. Ever.

This is the kind of mentor text that makes you want to try writing this way...right NOW.

Here's a taste:

"Without the A
the BEAST is BEST.

Without the B
the BRIDE goes for a RIDE.

Without the C
the CHAIR has HAIR."

See what I mean?

I wish you could actually see the book, because the other part of the fun is finding the duck, the mice, the octopus, the monkey, and the cats in spreads other than their own throughout the book.

Need a quote for a slide in your word study/vocabulary presentation? From the press release:

"Since we are really only able to think about the world, ourselves, and the nature of life itself (along with everything else) within the vocabulary that is available to us, the richer and more nuanced our language is, the richer our possibilities for thinking and understanding become. From this point of view, the ethical, political, cultural and intellectual imperatives for deepening a child's sense of language and its possibilities are profound. Giving them the idea that language is a vital material with which they can make and build and shape their world is so clearly of vital importance."

What are you waiting for?

Fun With Dictionaries

Advice to Little Girls
by Mark Twain
illustrated by Vladimir Radunsky
Enchanted Lion Books, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

I glanced at this book when it came in the mail, but what really caught my attention was this article on Brain Pickings that told how this book came to be published in the United States. Go ahead and click over to take a look. You'll get to see several spreads from the book, which will give you a feel for the quirkiness of the illustrations and the archaic language of Twain's text.

How to share this book with modern children, though? Here's what I came up with:

There are eight bits of text in the book. Perfect for eight groups of three. I told my students a bit about the scrapbook-feel of the book, about when it was written, and about Mark Twain. Working with a dictionary, I challenged each group to "translate" their bit of text into modern English. When they were all finished, I read each page, followed by the group reading their translation.

I was pleased with how much of the humor my students were able to understand, once they'd plowed their way through the language! Fun with dictionaries!!

10 for 10...plus two more!!

I know, I know.
#pb10for10 was on August 10th.
But what if I want to add two more books to my list?
Books that the UPS guy just delivered?

Can we please have a PLUS TWO day on August 12th, where everybody gets to add just two more books to their list?

Seed by Seed: The Legend and Legacy of John "Appleseed" Chapman
by Esmé Raji Codell
illustrated by Lynne Rae Perkins
Greenwillow Books, on shelves August 21
review copy provided by the publisher

Just in time for Johnny Appleseed's Birthday (September 26) comes this picture book that takes us back to the

"...quiet, tree-bough-tangled world,
the world before the cement was poured
and the lights turned on..."

Codell doesn't give us the same-old same-old cutesy Johnny Appleseed story. She identifies and elaborates on not just the apples, but 5 examples he planted for us:

Use what you have.

Share what you have.

Respect nature.

Try to make peace where there is war.

You can reach your destination by taking small steps.

This book is all kinds of perfection, from Codell's beautiful writing, to Perkins' gorgeous illustrations. I think we'll be adopting Chapman's five examples in Room 228.

Cat Tale

by Michael Hall (author of My Heart is Like a Zoo, which I reviewed in 2011)

Greenwillow Books, on shelves August 28

review copy provided by the publisher

This book will wind up living on my Word Study shelf, but I won't tell my students that when I share it with them.

I will introduce this book by asking the students, "What do you notice?"

"From word to word

they find their way,

Lillian, Tilly, and William J.

They pack some books

and kitty chews.

They choose a spot.

They spot some ewes."

What do you notice?

...Later in the book:

"They flee a steer.

They steer a plane.

They plane a board.

They board a train."

What do you notice? What do you predict will happen next?

The three cats' crazy romp through a tale filled with homophones and homonyms gets completely tangled up...but then, with the help of a purple whale, they make it back home again. Fun, fun, FUN!! (And did I mention, visually stunning, with art that "consists of acrylic painted textures and paper cutouts that were combined digitally.")

PW Starred Review

Go, Go, Grapes!

Go, Go, Grapes! A Fruit Chant

by April Pulley Sayre

Beach Lane Books, 2012

I said it last year when I reviewed Rah, Rah, Radishes!, and I'll say it again this year: April Pulley Sayre is the queen of chants!

She's chanting to the choir with both of these books, but a quick peek at my counter and refrigerator will show that I don't need ANY convincing on the subject of fruit! (How on earth am I going to eat a pint of blueberries, 2 mangoes, a pineapple and a bag of bing cherries before I leave on Friday?!?!)

As with Rah, Rah, Radishes!, Go, Go, Grapes! features vivid photos from farmer's markets and groceries around Ohio and Indiana, along with some guest appearances from a Vietnamese farmer's market in New Orleans for some of the most exotic fruits.

Word study? Check out these JUICY words!

Science? Use this book with your plant unit!

Writing workshop? Go gather up a collection of words on a topic and try writing your own chant!

WUMBERS by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld

I was thrilled to receive a review copy of WUMBERS from Chronicle Books. I am a huge Amy Krouse Rosenthal fan and love the fun that she has with words. The heading of the press release says, "GR8 NEW BOOK IS 1DERFULLY SILLY".  The entire book is told using numbers as parts of words as in the press release heading.  Each page sets the scene and the words and numbers work together to tell the story.  Reading the book feels like solving a riddle and I can see kids having a great time playing with this kind of writing once they read this book.  The author/illustrator team say that the book was inspired by William Steig's C D B! book so it would be fun to pair these. This seems like a great time for a book like this because kids see so much of this kind of word play in their lives with texting, Twitter, etc.

One of my favorite parts of this book are the endpages. There are several talking bubbles with questions for readers using numbers/words to ask the questions. For example, one of my favorites is, "Are you usually prompt or do you 10d 2 be l8 and keep others w8ing?"  Even the dedication, the author bios and the title page include fun with word/number combinations!

I love the whole idea of this book and can't wait to share it with kids. I'll keep it with my word play books but I think it will be a good one to use early in the school year when we are learning about keeping a writer's notebook. Playing with words like this is a fun thing that I think lots of kids might want to try if given the invitation.  It will be fun to see what they come up with!

Playing With Words--A Picture Book With Fun Plurals!

I was determined not to buy a book last week when I popped into a bookstore before meeting a friend for dinner. But I could not resist adding one more book to my Word Play collection.  One Foot, Two Feet:  An EXCEPTIONal Counting Book by Peter Maloney and Felicia Zekauskas is a counting book that celebrates irregular plural nouns.

Each number is introduced with a single object--such as "One Foot".   The illustration of a single foot shows through a cut-out frame in the page.  When the reader turns the page, he/she realizes that only part of the illustration has been visible and the one object turns into a group of objects--such as "Two Feet".  The book works its way from 1-10 (and then a billion:-) starting back at one for each new object.

Readers are introduced to words like mouse and mice, ox and oxen, octopus and octopi and more.

This book can be enjoyed in so many ways.  Without even thinking about the irregular plurals, this is a fun counting book for young children.  The numbers, the groups, and the illustrations make it a great concept book.  But the irregular plurals make it very unique.  I think this one will be a hit for so many reasons:-)

Word Wednesday

We notice words and talk about words (and, of course, "use our words") all day every day. But on Wednesday, we set aside our regular writing workshop for...Wooorrrrrrddddd Wednesday!

Sometimes we do activities like Syllable Squats and Nym Gyms from Vocabulary Unplugged. (Some sample pages here, website here.)

We have made Word Family Webs on chart paper (act: acts, acted, action, actor, activate, etc.) and then we used Evernote on the iPod Touches to create a class collection of word families. (Thank you Maria and Mark! In fact, thank you, Maria, for the whole concept of Word Wednesday!)

Sometimes we work on Spelling City. I have gathered lots of lists of words (from -at and -ing words to Velma's words in The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis...this would be an example of real-world differentiation) and on Spelling City, students can pretest, play games, write sentences and posttest.

I've written about how I use the SmartBoard and my classroom mirror for word study. Recently, I took a bunch of juicy words (from one of the Thea Stilton books) off the mirror and put them on the SmartBoard. We practiced finding the root word and the affixes, and the Thea reader stood a few inches taller because HER juicy words helped us learn.

We have lots of favorite word games to play on the iPod Touches on Word Wednesday. (You might guess that this is a favorite activity for Word Wednesday!) We like Wurdle, Chicktionary, and Bookworm. Soon we'll have Words With Friends (a current obsession of mine). We'll use the "Pass and Play" feature.

What are your favorite ways to celebrate words, collect words, play with words, and learn words -- on your own, or with your students?