Adapted
By:
Maureen Reilly P.S. 261
New York, NY
Principal: Zipporiah
Mills
Maureen entered the teaching
profession after a ten-year career as a writer and producer
for commercials, and websites such as LEGO.com and Cartoon
Network.com. Her past experience with working with
technology professionally led her to weave technology into
her curriculum.
Modifications
I
wanted my students to think more deeply about how to describe
the qualities of the character Wilbur in Charlotte’s
Web by E.B. White. After reading through
Stephen Manes’ Be A Perfect Person in Just Three
Days lesson plan, I decided to modify his vocabulary lesson
(#5). In Manes’ lesson, he asks students to look up synonyms
and antonyms to assigned words about a character on dictionary.com. I
modified this lesson by having my students find a new word
to describe Wilbur on thesaurus.com (part of dictionary.com)
based on a word that they created first. This new word
would be on Charlotte’s web that she would weave into
her web to help save Wilbur.
Instructional
Objectives
Students will:
identify traits of a character in literature
identify and use the thesaurus as a writing and vocabulary
building tool
independently utilize an online source as a learning
tool
Technology Integration
Students used
laptop computers and an internet website as tools to look up
new words on thesaurus.com.
Assessment
I
assessed my students through student observations during group
discussion, partner work on the laptops, and individual project
work.
Tips
for Teachers
I recommend
preparing students ahead of time on what a thesaurus is and
have them first map out their own word webs before going to
thesaurus.com. Many students were overwhelmed with the
number of similar words there were for the word “nice,” so
a demo of a word that may come up with a large number of word
matches may prepare and excite students for the activity.
