This book will help you teach a simple format in which to set up the definition of a person, place, or thing.
Hearing someone ask for a definition or reading the word define cues us to organize words into a particular pattern. By the time students are in second or third grade they're ready to define nouns by identifying the class in which the item belongs and naming characteristics that make a particular item uniqe within its class.
This book helps you teach students to use this pattern. For example:
A (item being defined) is a (name of superordinate class, category, etc.)
that (characteristic of the item that makes it unique within it class).
Lists of items by category are presented to enable students to learn the similarities of items belonging to a particular class, and to learn the name of the class.
Categories or classes of items presented are:
places, buildings, animals, foods,
clothing, vehicles, jobs & careers, tools,
sports, entertainment, and useful things
For example buildings would include items like:
airplane hanger, apartment building, bank, barn, boat house, broadcast studio, cafe, capitol building, car wash, castle, cathedral, church, city hall, club house, concert hall, condominium, etc.
Lists of descriptive terms are presented to help students tell how an item is unique in its class or simply to describe an item. For example, characteristics and different ways to talk about them are terms like:
color, brightness, size, shape, texture or touch, weight, material, strength,
taste, smell, sound, distance, value, position, motion, order, time, importance, appearance, style, inner feelings, temperament, use or purpose, and parts
An example of activities to teach descriptive vocabulary is:
The texture or consistency of objects or substances can be determined by touch or feel. How does each of these items feel?
peanut butter ________, a beach ________, a brick ________, melting snow ________, a silk tie ________, crackers ________, pudding ________, a caterpiller ________
Activity pages help students develop specific skills needed to construct definitions. For example, see if you can guess what is being defined here? Fill in the subject and the classification.
A __________ is a __________ that is large. (round, sour, has yellow rind, juicy pulp, white seeds)
A __________ is a __________ that is used to sit on, usually made of wood, has a back, a seat, and four legs.
You'll also find pages and pages of ideas and words in the book to build more advanced and creative descriptions such as:
> weather words
> animal classifications
> adverbs
> figurative expressions
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Storybooks