Although Hamlet's "to be or not to be" question is probably the most recognizable in the English language, few students understand its full meaning in the context of Hamlet's situation. In this lesson, students are asked to recite, analyze and then adapt this famous monologue with the aid of the Visual Thesaurus.  Continue reading...

In this lesson, small groups of students will compete in a "shades of meaning" contest to see which group can use the VT to help them match words with similar definitions but different connotations in the shortest amount of time.  Continue reading...

In this lesson, small groups of students will use the VT to assist them in an inquiry based approach to discovering the meanings of some common Latin and Greek roots. Then, each student will then teach a particular root and related vocabulary words to another group of students through a "jigsaw" exercise.  Continue reading...

In this lesson, small groups of ESL students will use the Visual Thesaurus to assist them in figuring out the meanings of some common English language idioms. Students will then create visual images to present their assigned idioms to the class-demonstrating how idioms can be interpreted both figuratively and literally.  Continue reading...

This lesson introduces students to modern poetry by letting them construct their own modern poems through a fun Mad Libs* like activity, where they must first supply words and phrases based on parts of speech clues and then plug their words into a poetic format. Then, small groups of students construct their own poetic Mad Libs for their peers based on poems of your choice.  Continue reading...

This lesson introduces students to sentence completion questions and then better prepares them for this section of the SAT by having them use the Visual Thesaurus to formulate original sentence completion questions to stump their classmates.  Continue reading...

This lesson introduces students to the basic concept of a synonym and how varying vocabulary usage through synonyms can enhance their writing. Students will also synthesize their understanding of synonyms and the Visual Thesaurus by playing "Synonym Charades," a fun guessing game where students will figure out original book or movie titles based on synonym clues.  Continue reading...