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Roulette: Close your eyes. Open the book to any page and randomly place your finger wherever it lands. Open your eyes but only read the word, not the definition. See if you know what the word means. If you don't, see if you can figure it out. If you do this with a friend, your friend can give you a hint to help you guess the definition. -
Definitions Only: This activity can only be done with two or more people. One person chooses any word in the dictionary. It should be a word that is pretty well known. That person reads only the definition to the other people in the group. The other people have to guess what word is being described. It's funny to see how many common words are hard to identify this way. When I was in high school, my father and I used to play this game most nights after dinner, while we were sitting at the table and had just finished our meals. It's one of my very special memories.
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Spelling Bee: Get with a partner and take turns asking each other how to spell words from the dictionary. One point is given for each correct word. Each player gets to continue as long as he or she keeps spelling words correctly.
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Party Game: Have you ever heard of the dictionary party game? You'll need a at least 4 players, a dictionary, paper, and pens. One person is chosen to be the reader/writer. That person chooses a very unfamiliar word from the dictionary and writes it on a piece of paper and shows it to the rest of the players. Each of the other players writes down their own definition of the word on a piece of paper. Generally, no one will know what the word means, so the definitions will be made up. Try to write your fake definition in the formal style of a real dictionary definition. The person who is the reader/writer will also copy the real dictionary definition of the word onto a piece of paper. The reader collects the papers and reads all of the definitions aloud, including the real one. The other players must vote for which definition they think is the real one. The person whose fake definition gets the most votes wins that round. The person to the left of the reader/writer now gets that job and the process is repeated. At the end of the game, whoever has the most points wins. It's a lot of fun!
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Browse! One of the greatest things to do with the dictionary is just browse. Let yourself wander through the pages and see what you find. Look at the illustrations. Look for words that you've never seen before. Find words that you love to say aloud, even if you don't understand what they mean. But beware, because you can easily get lost in the pages this way. You may even miss an episode of American Idol! (Look up sarcasm in the dictionary.)
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Go to http://www.m-w.com/. This online version of the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate dictionary is terrific. Each word has an audio clip associated with it, so you can hear how the word is pronounced. But one of the greatest things about this site is the Learner's Dictionary. Click on ESL in the horizontal blue bar toward the top of the home page and you'll be taken to the Learner's Dictionary area. This dictionary was especially created for English learners. You'll find many more pictures and sample sentences than in the main dictionary section. Look for the section with exercises for perfect English pronunciation. You can even create your own dictionary on the site; you can collect the words you look up so you can practice them in the future.
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Strange Words: Have a contest with a friend. Set a timer for 5 minutes, and see how many strange or crazy words you can find. Vote on who found the best word and see how many times you can use it in conversation that day.
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See What Else Is in There: Dictionaries have a lot more inside them than just words and definitions. Look in your dictionary and see what else you can find. You may see pictures of flags from all the world's countries, a guide to the money used in different nations, maps, and more.
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Story Time: Choose five words randomly by opening up to different pages and putting your finger on any word. Write these five words and their definitions on a piece of paper. Using all of the words, write a short story. Don't try to use perfect form or even make sense. Just have fun trying to connect the words somehow, and see what you can come up with.
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Index Card Bank: Each time you need to look up a word, write it on an index card. Store your cards in a ziploc bag and keep them with you at all times. When you're in a doctor's waiting room or on line at the supermarket, you can take out your words and review them while you wait.
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Vocabulary
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hint: a small piece of information that can help you do something or guess an answer more easily -
common: done by many people -
memories: thoughts about events that happened in the past -
take turns: when two people do something one after the other, sharing the activity -
unfamiliar: not often seen, heard, or experienced -
fake: not real -
browse: look at many things to see if something is interesting to you -
illustrations: pictures that go along with words or a story -
horizontal: positioned from side to side rather than up and down -
contest: an event that people try to win by doing something better than others -
conversation: talking between two or more people -
review: carefully look over something you've done
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Vocabulary Practice
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The teacher told the students to draw a _______________ line at the top of the page. -
When I have time, I love to ______________ through the shelves of the bookstore. -
My 2-year-old son is just learning to _________________ with his brother when they play. -
Tina was so excited when she realized she had won the dance ____________. -
It's nice to have _____________ of wonderful trips to exciting places. -
I get many compliments on my diamond earrings, but they're actually _________ ones that I bought for $12 at Macy's. -
It's very ____________ to have a fear of spiders. -
You should ______________ your exam for mistakes before you give it to the teacher. -
When you're in an _______________ neighborhood, it can be difficult to find your way around. -
If you don't know what to write about, your teacher can give you some writing ______________. -
The colorful __________________ in children's books are so much fun to look at. -
My friend has trouble starting a __________________ with someone she doesn't already know.
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Grammar Point
Adverbs
What is an adverb? An adverb is a word that can modify a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a phrase, or a clause. An adverb indicates manner, time, place, cause, or degree and answers questions such as "how," "when," "where," and "how much." Many adverbs do not end in -ly, but a lot of them do. We're just going to focus on the ones that DO end in -ly today. Here are some sentences from my blog entry that contain -ly adverbs in red type (after each sentence I'll show you why the red word is an adverb):
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Open the book to any page and randomly place your finger wherever it lands.
(How am I placing my finger? Randomly.)
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Each player gets to continue as long as he or she keeps spelling words correctly.
(How is he or she spelling words? Correctly.)
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But beware, because you can easily get lost in the pages this way.
(How can you get lost? Easily)
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Grammar Practice
Go to this website http://www.stickyball.net/grammar/107.html and complete the worksheet on adverbs. You have to fill in each blank with an -ly adjective that makes sense. Email me your answers and I will give you feedback. Have fun!
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A New Kind of Dictionary for Visual Learners
Do you learn vocabulary better if you see a picture of something rather than just read words to describe it? If you click on "Visual" in the horizontal blue toolbar on the www.m-w.com homepage, you'll find their Visual Dictionary.
Words are divided into 15 categories: Food & Kitchen, Clothing & Articles, Animal Kingdom, and 12 others. When you go to a category, you'll find many links to words that have been illustrated in the dictionary. For example, if I click on the category Earth, I'll find several subcategories. If I then click on Geology, I get a list of the words I can see illustrated. I clicked on the word "lake" and pictures of six different kinds of lakes: volcanic lake, oxbow lake, glacial lake, tectonic lake, artificial lake, and oasis.
They even have a fun Game of the Week that challenges you to name all the parts of a picture. This week's picture is a cash register:
I didn't even know that the parts of a cash register have names.
Try the Visual Dictionary to see if it helps you with the words you want to learn.
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