Over the summer, I read About the Authors: Writing Workshop with Our Youngest Writers by Katie Wood Ray and Lisa B. Cleaveland. One of the areas I felt my students always struggled in is word choice... not necessarily because they did not know words other than "good" or "cool," but because I really hadn't found an effective way to teach or inspire them not to use those "boring" words, other than just trying to model it in a few lessons and repeatedly discouraging boring words. It didn't really work! When reading this book, however, I came across an idea. The authors suggested a poster for the use of what my students and I now call "brave" words. Figure 4.4 on page 70 shows a chart entitled "I'm not afraid of my words!" Students are celebrated for attempting a challenging word by getting to put their name and their spelling of the word on the chart. Now comes the interesting part... the teacher lists the conventional spelling next to it. It seems over the years I have heard mixed reviews on this and I could never seem to decide if this would hurt children's feelings or not to see that they had been wrong, but with this approach it is a positive. When showing the conventional spelling, the class will either "celebrate how close the writer came or marvel at how different the spelling is from what the writer thought it would be." (Ray, 2004, p. 70). Ray (2004) also states that "It's a celebration either way because the focus is on not being afraid to try a hard word you know, not on getting the spelling right. " (p. 70)
I thought this was a great idea, but the next question was: How do I get my students to choose "better" words? We had tried in previous years to retire words like nice, good, and cool, but they just got replaced with really cool or awesome, a step up, but not where I wanted to be. I had come across a character named Fancy Nancy, who loved to use fancy words, but until reading the books by Boushey and Moser and Ray, I wasn't quite sure what to do with this. I decided to use these books to kick off our fancy word study, move onto the posters, and see where it led. Kids in previous years had grown attached to Skippyjonjones and the Pigeon, so maybe this could work. I read the book, and even had a little plush Fancy Nancy to show the class. I told them we would be fancy like her and find types of words she would like in our own books and even try to use them in our writing, and showed them some examples as I read another book out loud (one that did not stop and point out fancy words like Fancy Nancy stopped to do for her readers). I put them on a separate chart entitled, "We Use Fancy Words!" This was not for words we used in our writing, but instead for fancy words we found in our reading that were interesting. We periodically stop when we find these words, quickly use the context to discuss what they mean, and I Post-it that page so I can add the words to the chart when we are done. We use these words in our discussions when they are appropriate to give the students multiple exposures to the words. It was a good start.
This vocabulary goal just kept snowballing! In October I was fortunate enough to attend a conference with Lester Laminack. He talked about "luscious language" and reading to students daily just to let them hear this language, not as part of a reading or writing lesson, but just to listen and enjoy the book. He shared that one of his favorite authors was Cynthia Rylant and read one of her books aloud. I realized that while some of my books were great at teaching various reading strategies, some of them were not the best at providing opportunities to hear "luscious language." I started making it a point to read as the children were settling in after lunch each day, which was one of his suggested read aloud times. Sometimes I choose a book that goes along with a science or math theme, or matches what we are working on in reading workshop, but I try 2-3 times a week to pick a book that simply has great word choice. One author that my class has fallen in love with is Patricia Polacco and I am so excited to see that after reading her books together, children more often are walking back with her books in hand from the library rather than Captain Underpants. It seems that every time we turn around, we are noticing an interesting word in a book. If I had a dollar for every time I have heard a child gasp and whisper (ok, or sometimes shout), "That's a fancy word!" during a read aloud...!
Thanks to the professional development presented to me in my master's classes by way of the introduction of the Two Sisters and their CAFE method, Lester Laminack's advice, and the minilesson and chart ideas from Katie Wood Ray, I have been able to feel confident that I am finally providing students with ways to expand their vocabulary not just in reading, but in the even more risky task of writing... and celebrate and enjoy doing it. I am truly proud and amazed by my first graders and recommend these resources to any teacher who is exhausted by the overuse of the words, "good," "bad," "nice," "cool," etc. in their classrooms. I was fortunate to stumble across these resources all within a short time of one another and weave them into my reading and writing lessons, and now it's even spilling into the content areas as well. I hope that others can find these resources useful and inspiring as well! I am now onto 2 more books by Ray and excited to see where they will lead me next!
Resources:
Boushey, G., & Moser, J. (2009). The cafe book: engaging all students in daily literacy assessment and instruction. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
O'Connor, J. (2006). Fancy nancy. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Ray, K.W., & Cleaveland, L.B. (2004). About the authors: writing workshop with our youngest writers. Portsmouth, NH: Stenhouse.
