Sensacional: Teaching One Word Through Literature and Movement

Sometimes, because of holidays or parent conferences, we miss a class day. Since I see each class twice a week, having an extra day will put one class off schedule. I like to use these extra days to teach something different than the unit we are working on. This past week we started school on Tuesday instead of Monday. On the extra class I taught the word 'sensacional.'

I chose this word mainly because I really loved the use of it in the picture book Mi Hermano by Anthony Browne. This book is written from the prospective of one boy writing about his brother. He describes his brother doing some really amazing things. Browne repeats the word 'sensacional' several times throughout the story. Since I focused a lesson on that one word, I decided to highlight the word in my book with pink tape. I even replaced some words like 'genial' and 'magnifico' so that students got the opportunity to hear the word as many times as possible. The highlighted tape gave early readers a clue about when to expect to hear the word they just learned:

I taught students the meaning of the word 'sensacional.' They got the opportunity to tell me what things or places are 'sensacional' (Disney World, fireworks, roller coasters, etc.) Every time I read the word 'sensacional,' students would then repeat the word and do a movement like this:

Gifnija.com

I love teaching with movements (kinesthetic learning, TPR.) I associated the word 'sensacional' with the movement in the above animated picture. However, before we learned that movement, we practiced pronouncing the word several times. They key with repetition is that students do not get bored. Instead of saying the word with different voices, I tried saying the word several times with different body movements. For instance, if you wanted to use your shoulders you would bounce your shoulders to syllables in the word 'sensacional.' You can do any movement and practice vocabulary with it (head rolls, rolling of arms, fist pumps, butterflies, rolling ankles, etc.) You can even have each student get a chance to stand up and say the word in the craziest way they want (almost like a competition.)

After teaching students the word and reading the story, students got the opportunity to tell me who they thought was 'sensacional.' Students already talked about things or places they thought were 'sensacional' now they get to mimic the author's style and describe someone they think is 'sensacional.' Here is an example from Kindergarten:

Lena, a Kindergarten student, wrote that her friend is 'sensacional' "because she is really nice."