Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, so here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective exemplary. It means, variously, “serving as a pattern,” “deserving imitation,” commendable,” “deserving imitation because of excellence,” “serving as a warning,” and “serving as an example, instance, or illustration.”

While this adjective can’t be characterized as a high-frequency word, a cousin of it, the noun example, can be characterized that way. What’s more, exemplar is a nice solid noun students would undeniably benefit from understanding and being able to use in expository prose.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective plausible. It means, variously, “superficially fair, reasonable, or valuable but often specious (a plausible pretext)”; “superficially pleasing or persuasive, (a swindler…  then a quack, then a smooth, plausible gentleman —R. W. Emerson),” and “appearing worthy of belief (the argument was both powerful and plausible).”

For this worksheet, the first and last definitions are the one the context tries to elicit from students. Incidentally (and editorially as well, for which I ask forgiveness), I’ve long believed, and believe now more than ever, given the outhouse of misinformation that social media has become, that we should use at least some of our schools’ time teaching students about media literacy. If I designed a unit to address this perceived need, I would conduct a lesson on plausibility very early on in the cycle.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.