Human Dictionary

Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling

• 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

• 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

• 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.