Friday, March 25, 2011
R.I.P. Dead Words
How many of you are tired of seeing students use the words awesome, cool, nice, or good...to death? I know that I am! Especially when students come back saying that they added details and these are the words that they chose to describe. So, the other day we had a mini lesson before our writer’s workshop entitled, “Dead Words.” I drafted a quick paragraph using these powerless words. I then showed students a visual of a tombstone with their overused words.
I went through my draft and crossed out the dead words. As a class, we came up with a word bank of synonyms to be used as more exciting alternatives.
I went back to my draft, added these new powerful words and voila!!! My revision was much more alive and powerful. My students enjoyed the spin!
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2 comments:
My kids are too scared to write "I had fun" because they know Mrs. King will flip out. LOVE this idea!
http://queenofthefirstgradejungle.blogspot.com/
I will be doing this soon! At Halloween time I bought some of those plastic or foam tombstones that I plan on using to create a "resting" place for our dead words. Glad to hear your class enjoyed this! Hope mine will too!
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