Remeber the old days, when finding just the right word to describe a feeling required finding a dusty tome with the word THESAURUS emblazoned across it? A bit of a nuisance wasn't it? At least, that's how I recall it being for me quite often.
Leaps in technology no longer make the time component an issue. One need only type thesaurus.com into a laptop or phone and the entire catalogue of English verbiage is at one's fingertips. It's truly amazing. And yet, somehow, it remains a challenge for teachers to have students access and use these wonderful tools. I, therefore, made it a point to directly instruct my reading students in the use of the thesaurus, both online and via a word processing program.
I started by asking the students to list three words to describe themselves in a span of one minute. The word choices were fairly typical: nice, fun, happy, funny, kind, helpful, smart, etc. These are standard word choices at almost any age and I do not fault them in the least for falling back on them given the minute they had to create a list. We are creatures of habit and fall back on what we hear and use the most in daily communications. Again, completely expected and normal. So...
The students got a quick lesson on using Thesaurus.com and the thesaurus readily available in Word to make improvements to their orginal choices: kind became compassionate, happy became cheerful, funny became hilarious, and smart became clever. All improvements over the original choices and all completed in mere seconds.
There were some other useful benefits to pursuing this activity too. The students had an opportunity to discuss multiple word meanings. Smart can refer to the intelligence of a person and also his manner of dress. We took time to talk about the parts of speech and how words used to describe ourselves are adjectives. This helped narrow down selections when online.
I do believe the students were quite pleased with their new word choices at the end of the acitvity, and they felt a little more empowered. It didn't hurt either that when using the thesaurus within Word it required a few simple clicks of the mouse to change a word. I gave the following sample sentences as an example: It was a bad day because of the rain. The weather put me in a bad mood. So, I did badly on my tests. Of course the students laughed recognizing both a lame set of sentences and my weak reliance on the word bad. But, in less than fifteen seconds I turned three lame sentences into three servicable sentences. It was a terrible day because of the rain. The weather put me in an awful mood. So, I did poorly on my tests.
Shakespeare would hardly be envious of the changes, but that doesn't mean we didn't improve our word choices. The sentences convey much more now. Apparently the weather affects some of us quite dramatically. Long live Thesaurus Rex!
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