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Defining and Describing

    140 perfect bound pages

    Grades 3 and up

    Item CP-014 $29.95

This book is clearly one of the best vocabulary references available for helping students learn to define and describe.

Defining and Describing helps you teach a simple format in which to set up the definition of a person, place or thing.

Hearing someone ask for a definition or reading the word define cues us to organize words into a particular pattern. By the time students are in second or third grade they’re ready to define nouns by identifying the class in which the item belongs and naming characteristics that make a particular item unique within its class.

This book helps you teach students to use this pattern:

A (item being defined)

    is a (name of superordinate class,
    category, etc.)

      that (characteristics of the item that
      make it unique within its class)

Lists of items by category are presented to enable students to learn the similarities of items belonging to a particular class, and to learn the name of the class.
Categories or classes of items presented:
places clothing sports
buildings vehicles entertainment
animals jobs and careers useful things
foods tools  
Example of activities to teach similarities and differences among items within a class:
Lists of descriptive terms are presented to help students tell how an item is unique in its class or simply to describe an item.
Characteristics and different ways to talk about them:
color taste time
brightness smell importance
size sound appearance
shape distance style
texture or touch value inner feelings
weight position temperament
material motion use or purpose
strength order parts
Example of activities to teach descriptive vocabulary:
Activity pages help students develop specific skills needed
to construct definitions.

You’ll also find pages and pages of ideas and words to build more advanced and creative descriptons:

  • weather words
  • animal classifications
  • adverbs
  • figurative expressions
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