Thirty Days to Unlock FCAT Writing Success - Polk County School ...

Additional Combinations of Activities for Week Five:
Ten Teacher or Student-Led Activities for Word Choice
1. Build a word bank (in your notebook,, bulletin board, classroom word wall, etc.) of words you like.
2. Build a memorial to DEAD words. Find a mutual place in the classroom to get rid of all dead words
such as good, nice, very, etc.
3. Find HEAVY words. In any piece of writing, some words and phrases are asked to carry most of the
weight, most of the meaning. Get an excerpt from any piece that is rich with HEAVY words. Students
should circle those words that carry the most weight then compare to see if others chose the same.
Look through your own writing to see if you can identify HEAVY words. You should be able to do so.
4. Connotation/Denotation Thesaurus work. Students work in groups to look up a word (from a list of
words that have multiple meanings) provided by the teacher. Ask students to choose 6-10 of the most
interesting diverse variations on their word theme, and create a lesson in which they make the nuances
of meaning clear. They can do written or oral definitions, give a quiz, dramatize the meanings—or do
anything they wish to make the meanings clear, and to make the point that synonyms are not all
interchangeable.
5. Talk about the life of language. Have a discussion about some words that are no longer in use and
new words that have just been created. Make a list of words that we use now that will most likely be
gone in the next fifty years.
6. Take out JARGON. Again, the books for dummieshas grown popular because of their ability to remove
jargon from typically difficult text. Bring in a piece of technical writing and have students (possibly in
pairs) work on revising it to make it more user-friendly and less jargonistic.
7. Collect quotations with really great language in it. One of my favorites is by Mark Twain, “Loyalty to
petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul.” I love this quote because the words are so
rich. They are simple enough words individually, but together in this sense it becomes very rich.
8. Play word games so that students become fascinated with words. Tell about the origins of words such
as Bikini (named after the island where the atomic bomb was tested—recognizing the bathing suit could
create the same reaction). Talk about cliches and their origins. Ask about words or sayings that are
specific to family members. What colloquial sayings do your students know?
9. Highlight all the verbs and nouns in your writing and revise at least half of them to improve. Changing
verbs often requires rewriting or restructuring the sentences. Make sure they are well-aware of all the
“be” verbs.
10. Pay close attention to adverbs, especially used as taglines in dialogue. Use “said.” As Strunk and
White so eloquently say “Do not dress words up by adding -ly to them, as though putting a hat on a
horse. “ -- Elements of Style, 4th ed..
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