(Harder), Better, (Faster), STRONGER

Thanks for the title, Kanye. Now let's take these lyrics and apply them to our language learning. The students in my class are incredibly secure in their foundational knowledge of English. To me, the next step is transforming your expressions into sophisticated, well-developed articulations that offer better, stronger meaning. As part of our "Outdoor Adventure" unit, we're exploring figurative language and powerful descriptive phrases. We watched this teacher's minilesson and challenged ourselves to identify similes & metaphors in pop songs that we all (well, maybe not all...) know & love.

Today, we explored the rich, deliciously descriptive world of synonyms. We started with simple words of  emotion, such as "happy," "sad," "angry," and "fear," because these feelings are universally experienced. Students were then each asked to create a "shades of description" strip where they used powerful synonyms to illustrate a full spectrum of meaning. The lighter colors represented less potent word choices; as the color on the paint sample strip became deeper or more vivid, so too did the vocabulary associated with it. Check out our work:

Shades of Description

For homework, my students will take this activity to a higher level, writing about emotion-based or weather-related topics (both themes are major components of the short fictional story we're reading this week, entitled "A Blizzard under a Blue Sky" by Pam Houston) using powerful descriptive phrases. I can't wait to see what these gifted linguists/writers/comedians produce!