Vocabulary | Diana Cruchley

miss-alaineus Sage is home sick, but she is trying to continue with her vocabulary homework. It goes awry when she mistakes miscellaneous for Miss Alaineus. Her mother is holding a box with spaghetti hair on it when she mentions she needs “miscellaneous things” from which Sage concludes she is the woman on the box. When she defines it that way, the whole class laughs. Sage is devastated until she ends as Miss Alaineus, Queen of All Miscellaneous Things at the Vocabulary Parade. This book is full of charming puns and built in word definitions.

Clever Langauge

This book is a terrific writing model for students. Sage, our storyteller, enjoys defining words and regularly halts her sentences to define a word. The word is in bold, and the definition is in italics.

“I thought she was an ancestor, an ancient relative long dead, who had left us…”

“ Impossible,” I told her. Impossible: not capable of happening.”

“I was devastated: wasted ravaged. Ruined: destroyed. Finished: brought to an end.”

For the most part, Sage creates her own definitions. Students could write their own clever stories using this strategy—to write in the first person and to stop the story to define a word. This is also an opportunity to encourage the development and use of an extensive vocabulary.

The A-Z Vocabulary Challenge

In the borders of the book are sentences relating to the plot, but emphasizing the letters of the alphabet in order:

B “What did I tell you? This berserk bacteria has bulldozed me badly. Help!”
D “I am defective and delirious, and so I will dwindle away.” (The author has a cold at the time.)

After students have written a simple story, ask them to change and add to it until it has 24 sentences. Then ask them to place 3 A words (using fresh verbs, adjectives, etc.) into the first sentence; 3 B words in the second…skipping X and Z (hence 24 sentences).

For 9 writing ideas, click Miss Alaineus to download.

library-mouse Sam, the Library Mouse, lives in the reference section and reads all the genres in the school library. One day he decides to write his own miniature book – a biography. His next is a mystery, then a full chapter book. He sneaks them onto the shelves in the correct library section and slowly develops “fans”. The librarian invites him to do an author reading but Sam knows he can’t. He solves the problem by making a pile of blank miniature books. Then he wraps a Kleenex box with a sign saying, “Meet the Author”. When students look in, they see their own face in the mirror he placed in the box.

Creating Your Own Miniature Books

Before reading the book to the students, design a decorated Kleenex box with a “meet the author” sign and a mirror glued inside. At the critical point in the story, allow a student to look into the box to “meet the author.” Continue the story, but when it is complete, place some story idea strips in the box from which the students can draw. Ask students to use the idea they drew to start their own “mini masterpiece.” (Of course, if necessary they could suggest their own.) A pattern for a very tiny book (use 11 X 17 paper) is available with the pdf of ideas.

Archy and Mehitabel

Archy was a cockroach that “lived” in the office of the newspaper writer Don Marquis. This lovely character declared, “Expression is the need of my soul.” Every day he wrote free-verse poetry by diving head first onto the keys of Don Marquis’ typewriter in the night to describe a cynical cockroach’s eye view of the world. Because he can’t do upper case or punctuation (because he can’t hold down the shift key) all his “poems” are written in lower case without punctuation. Included with the pdf is a copy of the very first “article” he wrote when the character was introduced to the public.

Archy’s enemy is Mehitabel the reincarnated alley cat. Students could try their hand at writing from the point of view of a typing mouse.

For 7 creative writing ideas, click Library Mouse to download.