Teach students how to omit clichés from their writing

A sign of a more sophisticated writer is one who can write with strong description, interesting similes and metaphors. Unfortunately, in an attempt to include more description and imagery, students often pull from a bank of overused, voiceless and predictable clichés.    read more...

Got purple words?

What's one way to make sure students know when you love their word choice? Stroke those words with a purple highlighter!    read more...

Simple acrostic poems encapsulate word meanings

When teaching students new vocabulary words in the content areas or in language arts, one thing you could do, beyond just talking about definitions, is to have students develop an acrostic poem for that term.    read more...

Using the Smekens’ voice poster to teach word choice

Here's a terrific idea from Jordana Anderson (Aylesworth Elementary, Portage, IN) for teaching both voice and word choice.    read more...

Strengthen student titles

It seems rather insignificant, but there is great power in teaching young writers about titles. For a kindergartner, the title is the first beginning they write. Eventually, as writers develop, a title becomes the attention grabbing words before the first sentence.    read more...

Developing core vocabulary for each academic area

When most you attended school, you probably had the same type of vocabulary study I did --- a list of 10-20 words a week that each required a dictionary/glossary definition and a sentence using the term. After a little discussion and maybe some matching games, we'd take a test over the terms at the end of the week. I don't know about you, but I would then proceed to forget each term over the weekend, because I knew I was inheriting a new list of 10-20 words come Monday morning. This cycle produced little retention for most of us.    read more...

Identify synonyms for the basic color words

Consider teaching students that strong word choice is like selecting just the right shade of a word. Compare general words to 8-box crayon words and more specific words to 24- or 64-box crayon words.    read more...

Here’s a great boy book for word choice

Many teachers utilize Jane O'Connor's Fancy Nancy to teach word choice and target precise language. It's a fabulous picture book for the trait of word choice. But many have asked for a "boy book" that targets the same word choice skills but is a little less girly. Found it!    read more...

Celebrating strong word choice

Kimberly Moisan encourages her Minooka Intermediate students (Minooka, IL) to strive for better word choice. She has taken a section of the classroom wall and titled it "Most Valuable Vocabulary." When she hears students utilize strong word choice, she celebrates their growing vocabulary by inviting them to add their words to her wall.    read more...

Broaden word choice with the online thesaurus

A class thesaurus is a great resource, but a more up-to-date resource is the very user-friendly Merriam-Webster website.    read more...