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Georgia Scurletis

Georgia Scurletis is Director of Curriculum for the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com. Before coming to Thinkmap, she spent 18 years as a curriculum writer and classroom teacher. Georgia has written curriculum materials for a variety of Web sites (WGBH, The New York Times Learning Network, Edsitement) and various school districts. While teaching high school English in Brooklyn, she was a recipient of the New York State English Council's Educators of Excellence Award, the Brooklyn High Schools' Recognition Award, and The New York Times' Teachers Who Make a Difference Award.
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Vocab activities for your classroom

Getting Beyond the Definition
Tue Jan 05 00:00:00 EST 2010
By Georgia Scurletis

Can you imagine trying to explain the word currency without using the words money, exchange or country? Or, how about trying to explain epic without referring to the words hero, narrative or poem? This activity, borrowed from Hasbro's Taboo game, is a great way to have students review a list of vocabulary words from class in a fun, engaging format.  Continue reading...
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Vocab activities for your classroom

Paying Attention to Word Choice: One of the 6 + 1 Traits of Writing
Wed Nov 25 00:00:00 EST 2009
By Georgia Scurletis

According to educator and writer Ruth Culham "precise nouns, descriptive adjectives, and energetic verbs" are all examples of the rich language we should be encouraging students to develop as teachers emphasize "word choice" as one of the "6 + 1 traits of writing."  Continue reading...
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Vocab activities for your classroom

Marzano's Six Steps to Effective Vocabulary Instruction
Thu Oct 22 00:00:00 EDT 2009
By Georgia Scurletis

Ed researcher Robert J. Marzano suggests that we can help close the achievement gap by explicitly teaching subject-specific academic vocabulary to those students who are lacking the background knowledge to succeed in school. We urge you to check out this handy-dandy chart that demonstrates how the Visual Thesaurus can help you implement Marzano's six steps of vocabulary instruction.  Continue reading...
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Vocab activities for your classroom

Dissecting a Simile with VocabGrabber
Mon Aug 31 00:00:00 EDT 2009
By Georgia Scurletis

In Bob Greenman's "Teachers at Work" column about the value of having students appreciate and create similes, he astutely points out that while writers should avoid using a simile that is a cliche ("smart as a whip," etc.), they should also establish "a comparison with something almost any reader can picture or identify with."  Continue reading...
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Vocab activities for your classroom

Walk This Way!
Mon Jul 13 00:00:00 EDT 2009
By Georgia Scurletis

Teachers, looking to get students out of their seats and learning some new words? Try introducing pantomime as a vocabulary-enriching activity. As Beck, McKeown and Kucan point out in Creating Robust Vocabulary, "physically responding to words can promote connections to new word meanings."  Continue reading...
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Vocab activities for your classroom

VocabGrabbing Technical Jargon
Wed Jun 10 00:00:00 EDT 2009
By Georgia Scurletis

Sometimes our vocational ed (CTE) students have a difficult time reading technical literature because the heavy use of jargon gets in their way, hampering comprehension and frustrating those students who may prefer hands-on learning situations. VocabGrabber can help prevent this experience: students can "grab" a text's jargon beforehand, preview those terms, and then head back to the text with a good understanding of the key concepts they will encounter while reading.  Continue reading...
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Vocab activities for your classroom

Visualization and Vocabulary Retention
Mon May 04 00:00:00 EDT 2009
By Georgia Scurletis

If you ask a roomful of students to close their eyes and to picture a person who is suffering from acrophobia ("a morbid fear of great heights"), what will they visualize? Some students might picture a person timorously peering off a cliff while other students might envision a person refusing to clean the gutters of their house's rooftop.  Continue reading...
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