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Defining and Describing

by Marilyn M. Toomey
Illustrated by Kevin M. Newman

Item: 9780923573140


Age Group: Grades 3 and up

Format: softcover
Pages: 140


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 organise 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
buildings
animals
foods

clothing
vehicles
jobs and careers
tools
sports
entertainment
useful things

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:
colour
brightness
size
shape
texture or touch
weight
material
strength
taste
smell
sound
distance
value
position
motion
order
time
importance
appearance
style
inner feelings
temperament
use or purpose
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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