children. I believe that being enthusiastic and curious about words is an essential part of being a literate adult. Most people seem to stop actively expanding their vocabulary as the grow older and I think this is exceptionally sad; especially for speakers of the english language which has thousands and thousands of interesting, and often silly, words. I believe one cause of this may be that people often feel a sense of shame connected with the words, "I don't know" or "I don't understand." In many cases, instead of encouraging our children to say, "Tell me more" we model the action of pretending to understand when we really do not.
I am very excited to share my passion and "word wonder" with the children in my classroom by not only introducing them to their regular vocabulary words but also new words that I discover or my new favorite word. Currently my favorite word is advesperating which is the word that represent the time of day right before sunset.
I believe it is important to keep building your vocabulary. I also believe that is important to share this with your students. It allows them to see that learning is continuous through life. Nice word, by the way,- advesperating. I learned a new word today. =)
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