Lesson plan
Human Dictionary
Learning Objectives
Students will be able to figure out the meaning of unknown words using various strategies and clues.
The adjustment to the whole group lesson is a modification to differentiate for children who are English learners.
Introduction
(5 minutes)
- Ask, “What do you do when you’re reading and come across a word that you don’t know?” Write a few answers on the board.
Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling
(10 minutes)- Read aloud a page of a book to the class. Choose one word that you will work on figuring out the meaning of.
- Briefly review the following strategies for figuring out the meaning of unknown words:
- Where did the word come from? Think about prefixes, suffixes, and root words.
- What would make sense? Use context cues.
- Check in with your senses: Is the mystery word a sensory word?
- Homophones & Homographs: Does the word sound like another word you’ve heard before?
- Synonyms and antonyms: Do you know another word with a similar or opposite meaning?
- Compound word: Is the word made up of smaller words?
- Is it an abbreviation?
- Use the strategies that are most relevant to the unknown word you selected to figure out the meaning of the word.
Guided Practice
(15 minutes)- Have students work with a partner to find a book. Have partners locate a word that they are not sure of the meaning of and use one of the strategies you identified.
- Ask pairs to share their sentence, word, strategy, and the word’s meaning.
Independent working time
(20 minutes)- Have students select a book at their reading level. As they read, have students complete the Read the Word Clues worksheet as they identify and figure out the meaning of unknown words.
- Have students complete the Prefix, Suffix, Make Sense of It worksheet when they finish reading.
Differentiation
Support: Highlight the words that students should work to figure out the meaning of.
Enrichment: Have students check their definitions in a dictionary and make their own glossary featuring the words that they encountered.
Assessment
(5 minutes)- Write a few simple sentences on the board. In each sentence, include one word that students probably won't know. Examples include:
- My sister just bought a very unique dollhouse.
- What's the purpose of wearing a helment?
- Can you please disable the fire alarm?
- Give the students a few minutes to figure out the unknown words, using one of the strategies they learned today.
- Call on a few students to explain how they figured out what the unknown word meant and what strategy they thought was the most helpful.
Review and closing
(5 minutes)- Have students share some of the words and definitions that they worked with during independent work time.
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