Word Consciousness

“Word consciousness can be defined simply as interest in and awareness of words (Anderson and Nagy 1992; Graves and Watts-Taffe 2002)” (Diamond & Gutlohn, 2006, p. 158).  It includes the following:

• knowledge of relationships between words (synonyms, antonyms, homophones/homographs/homonyms)
• understanding figurative language (similes, metaphors, idioms)
• word play (e.g., word games, proverbs, slang, acronyms, word manipulations, riddles)
• word histories and origins 

Your Vocabulary Handbook has several activities designed to foster word consciousness.  One example is the “Five-Senses Simile Web.”  In this activity, students complete a graphic organizer with similes to describe how the target word, often an abstract noun, relates to each of the five senses.

Expose students to idioms to help them understand the denotative (i.e., literal, direct) meaning as compared to the connotative (i.e., implied) meaning.  A list of idioms can be found in the Vocabulary Handbook.  Students can use the “Common Idioms” page from the “Masters” section of IMSE’s Morphology Plus Teacher’s Guide to illustrate both the denotative and connotative meaning of an idiom. 

Diamante poems are a great example of a word play activity.  Students can write an antonym diamante or a synonym diamante.  See Vocabulary Handbook for a lesson model, including the format for each type of diamante poem.

Teaching students about morphology and the layers of the English language (i.e., Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Greek) contributes to their understanding of word histories and origins.  An online resource that provides detailed information regarding the history, or etymology, of words, is www.etymonline.com.