Making It Personal

Using some durable piece of paper—your language arts notebook will do fine—begin to write down words that you discover in your reading that you can't define. Pursue words actively and become alert to words that you simply overlooked in the past. Write down the word and the page number in your notebook; then, with a dictionary at your disposal, write down a definition of the word directly below; lastly, on the next line, write a brief sentence using the word, underlined.

Ex.

Name

Mr. Cacciatore

LA / 4

Date

Vocabulary Builder

1. missive (n.), p. 23
a letter or document
She received a missive from the tax collector asking for the payment of an overdue bill.

Take out the paper and review daily your vocabulary words until you feel comfortable that you would recognize (and be able to use) these words the next time you see them. The amazing thing is that you will see the words again—even "nefarious miscreants," and probably sooner than you thought. In fact, you might well discover that the words you've written down are rather common. What's happening is not that, all of a sudden, people are using words you never saw before, but that you are now reading and using words that you had previously ignored.

Number of Words: 10-15

Due Date: TBA