Teaching ideas 1 Far-out fandangles

Teaching ideas 1
Far-out fandangles
Words through time
Did you know that a paintbrush used to be
called a pencil? Or that nice used to mean
stupid? And terrific, coming from the word
‘terror’, once meant causing great fear! Ask your
class whether a tablet is medicine or a small
computer. Does sack mean bag or dismissing
an employee? How many words can your class
think of that have changed or extended their
meanings over time? Brainstorm a list before
giving pairs of students a word each to research.
Using the internet (dictionary.com is a good
starting point) or detailed dictionaries, students
should be able to:
▪▪ discover the approximate year/century/era
when the word was first used
▪▪ give its original definition
▪▪ state (approximately) when the word was
first used with another meaning
▪▪ give its current meanings.
It might even be possible to find a reason why
the change occurred.
iWords
As highlighted in The School Magazine
this month, technology has produced an
incredible number of neologisms. Besides
abbreviations such as internet (interconnecting
network), email (electronic mail) and blog
(web log), many old words have been given
new meanings, e.g. tablet and mouse, and
new words have been created, e.g. googling.
Ask your students to brainstorm as many
technology words as they can, particularly
words introduced in the last ten to twenty
years. You could then discuss and label the
words as abbreviations, new usages, or new
words.
You could also ask students to create their own
technology words that they predict might join
the lexicon. As an extension, this could include
new ideas for text message ‘lolspeak’, e.g. LOL,
OMG, BTW. Discuss or debate whether these
abbreviations should be considered part of
standard English.
Holding a tongue twister contest
Define tongue twisters for the class and give
or ask for examples, e.g. ‘red leather, yellow
leather,’ ‘Irish wristwatch,’ ‘unique New York,’
‘the rural juror’. Have your class recite the most
complicated ones you can find over and over at
speed to demonstrate how twisty they can be.
Then arrange students in small groups to
write a new tongue twister. The tongue twister
doesn’t have to be long, but each tongue
twister should have one or more of the
following features to make them tricky:
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JUNE 2012 [vol. 97 no. 5]
▪▪ rhyming words, e.g. ‘She sells sea shells …’
▪▪ alliteration, e.g. ‘Peter Piper picked a peck …’
▪▪ repeated words, e.g. ‘How much wood would
a wood chuck chuck …’
▪▪ half-rhymes, e.g. ‘six’, ‘thick’ and ‘sticks’.
After each group has created a tongue twister,
hold a class competition, with each group
submitting its champion performer to recite all
the tongue twisters.
TEACHING GUIDE