Some time ago I saw an excellent resource that was being shared by
teachers on Twitter, to encourage the use of more precise language and to
broaden the vocabulary of pupils. Geoff Barton has published his list of 100 words to sharpen your expression,
this got me thinking as to how it could be used within Geography.
I decided to work on some
creative writing with KS3 who are coming to the end of a topic on coasts and
coral reefs. Pupils were introduced to 3 "Wonder Words"
(thanks to Geoff's list). Pupils were given examples of poems available
online and read them to unpick ways the author had made the poem appealing,
including sentence length, rhyme and rhythm. We then snowballed words that
could make it into our poems including colours, sounds and feelings. Once
pupils had a bank of words to choose from they were introduced to the words
arcane, lurid and iridescent. One pupil was inspired to add translucent as he
felt that would better describe the look of jelly fish (now they were really
getting it about being precise with language)!
The
results were a mixture of visually and linguistically interesting poems. Some
pupils chose to echo the sea through their sentence length and layout of this
work.
Almost
all of the pupils could confidently put these words into a sentence and they
left being able to spell and define the selected words. Next time I plan to use
a wider variety and encourage debate about the precise meanings of these words,
maybe throw in a few red herrings and dictionary work to support their skills
at questioning and defining words.
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