Thanks for all the great responses to my Thesaurus query!
Original Request:
I had a 4th grade teacher ask me this morning if I could do a mini
lesson with her class this afternoon on the Thesaurus. This will be a
quick (15 min. max) introductory lesson about what a Thesaurus is and
how it's organized. I'd like to do something creative and interactive.
I checked the archives and got a few ideas, but am looking for more.
Does anyone have a simple, yet exciting way to introduce the Thesaurus
to 4th graders?
Responses:
*You could have them do kind of a “Mad Libs” type activity where
you give them a story and they have to supply the synonyms and antonyms
to fill in the blanks, then share them aloud.
*Divide kids into groups have one group choose a word and other group
find synonym Race to find answer makes it competitive. Teacher may
choose word first then have kids challenge the other group.
*You can put a word up on the board and ask them if they can "Beat"
the thesaurus as a group by thinking of as many synonyms to that word
as
they can. Record their replies. Then have them look it up and see
how
many the thesaurus has and which ones they missed or which ones they
thought of that wasn't in their thesaurus. It helps to highlight that
not every thesaurus has every synonym, or can be a good as their own
knowledge. You could even keep score to see if they beat it or not.
*How about starting by reading "Boris ate a Thesaurus" by Neil Steven
Klayman. Then you could go on by making some kind of outlandish
phrase
that they would decipher by using the Thesaurus. IE use words that
they
have no clue what they mean but once they use the Thesaurus they
understand it very easily. Not very creative but it may peak their
interest just enough.
*This is something i do with third grade: I tell them what a thesaurus
is, and demo how to use it. Then I give teams a short form of "Little
Red Riding Hood" that I wrote with my simple words under a line. Teams
use the thesaurus to find a synonym that keeps the meaning. Then we
share our stories.
*What about taking famous sayings and changing them using the
thesaurus? If you have enough thesauruses, you could give each group
several sayings and see what they come up with, and see if any of them
use the same words.
Then you could write a really boring sentence and have the students
make them more interesting using the thesaurus. Maybe something like
The dog ran home. My dress looks nice. etc. etc
*Not sure if this will help, but here goes! This is an activity on how
to use the thesaurus I did with elementary students while I was student
teaching a few years ago. I think it should be doable in 15 minutes.
I had the students get in small groups. Each group picked a picture of
a different animal out of an envelope. As a group, the students made a
list of 5 words (or however many students were in each group would work)
that described their animal. They then had to use the thesaurus to look
up a synonym for each of their words. At the end of the lesson, each
group read their synonyms aloud and their classmates tried to guess the
animal the group was describing. The students had fun guessing which
animal each group had, had to choose words that would aid their
classmates in guessing correctly, and the lesson doesn't need a lot of
prepping.
*I use a lesson called "Make Your Writing More Exciting" for the
thesaurus.
In a nutshell, take a common saying (i.e. Don't cry over spilt milk.)
and change around the words. (Stop weeping above knocked over bovine
liquid, or whatever) Then as we talk about synonyms we work through
what the saying really is. I have a worksheet with a few more mixed up
sayings for them to figure out (you can do it easily on a whiteboard as
a whole class) and then, what the kids really like, they take a saying
and use the thesaurus to change it and try to stump their classmates
*In this month’s Library Sparks on pages 6 and 7 is the answer to
your dilemma! The article is called $10.00 words in the bank: a library
lesson that pays. If you cannot gain access to this lesson, it is under
freebies, doodads, & Helpful Hints, I will try to describe in greater
detail for you.
*Sharon Creech's Heartbeat has a poem about the thesaurus and some
that reference the main character using it.
Catie Jefferds
Elementary Library Media Specialist
Kelley/Perkins/Lincoln Schools
Newark Central School District
Newark, NY
cjefferds@newark.k12.ny.us
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