The Reading Teacher's Sourcebook - The Meadows Center for ...

• Have students keep a journal of effective written language, including well-written descriptions,figurative language, or dialogue.• Write a dull version of a particularly well-written paragraph or chapter, and read both versions tothe class. Discuss the differences and what makes language effective and exciting.• Incorporate word plays such as palindromes, puns, jokes, and riddles into your instructionalroutines (Stahl, 1999).(Texas Reading Initiative, 2000)WORD LEARNINGTeachers cannot directly teach students every single word they need to know. They can, however, teachsome words directly and then equip students with independent word-learning tools, or ways to figure outword meaning on their own as they read. Teaching students how to recognize and analyze word parts isone such independent word-learning tool. Another way to teach independent word learning is through theuse of context clues to infer the meaning of unknown words. Recent research on teaching word learningto middle school students suggests that combining word part clue and context clue strategies is a powerfulway to increase your students’ ability to discover word meaning independently (Baumann, Font, Edwards,& Boland, 2005; Andersen & Nagy, 1992; Sternberg, 1987). Word parts and context clues may be taughtseparately, but should eventually be combined so that students realize that they might have to try morethan one strategy in order to figure out a word’s meaning while they are reading.The Reading Teacher’s Sourcebook 143