Purple Word Day

To celebrate strong word choice in student writing, Kristina Smekens has suggested the idea of using a purple highlighter. Rather than writing lots of time-consuming, word-choice compliments on student papers, a teacher can quickly communicate the same message with just a stroke of a purple highlighter. It's fast! But the purple highlighter is also a perfect choice for this because it's hard to find--it's rare. Pink, yellow, orange, blue, and green highlighters are common. Instead use the rare purple highlighter on their unique and rare word choice. And when you pass back papers, students will love counting how many purple words you found in their writing.

After hearing this idea, Melanie Beaver, 7th grade language arts teacher at West Vigo Middle School (West Vigo, IN), wore purple from head to toe the day she introduced "word choice" to her students. (See photo of Melanie and her student teacher Josh Sluder.)

Taking it beyond that day, Melanie wore the same hideous purple outfit on the day when her students were writing to the state assessment writing prompt last spring. Her ensemble served as a nonverbal reminder to her students to use strong "purple" words in their writings. Some teachers will do anything to encourage their students to use purple words!

Thanks for sharing, Melanie!