Procedure Guide: IDENTIFYING DENOTATIVE MEANING

 

Purpose: To guide students to recognize relationships among words and categorize them by meaning.

 

Preparation

  • Select several target words from the text that is to be read.
  • Determine the meaning for each word and decide upon two additional words that share that meaning.
  • For each set of words, list its meaning plus three additional possible meanings on a transparency, chalkboard, or chart paper.

Examples:

ingest, consume, shovel in are all

                                    ways of talking

                                    ways of walking

                                    animal names

                                    ways of eating

 

Before

  • Tell the students the purpose for this activity.
  • Model the strategy for the students, making sure they understand procedure and expectations.
  • Have students complete the activity independently.
  • In pairs, have students discuss their choices.
  • With the entire class, discuss students' choices, allowing them to clarify and revise their thinking; the teacher should clarify only if and when the students cannot.

 

During

  • Have students evaluate their understanding of the target terms as they read.

 

After

  • Discuss students' during-reading evaluations of each word.
  • Have students create sentences that make use of the terms given in the list.

 

Assessment

Choices of appropriate meaning categories

During-reading self-evaluations

   Correct use of listed terms In student-created sentences