My Great-Grandmother’s Gourd

1. My Great-Grandmother’s Gourd Vocabulary

2. Words for the Week Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress

3. Which of these words do you recognize? Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress

4. Which of these words could you put into a sentence? Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress

5. Which of these words could you define? Brimming Parched Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress

6. Can you divide these words into the categories of noun, verb, and adjective? Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress

7. Brimming (adj) • I closed the top of the team’s ice chest. It was brimming with ice and so many drinks that I could hardly press it shut. • A long line of girls with brimming buckets and tins, head pans and gourds balanced on their heads, streamed back and forth between the huts and pumps.

8. This is what brimming looks like.

9. Gushed (verb) • The water there gushed over the rocks and would splash us. • Out gushed a stream of clear water.

10. This is what gush looks like.

11. Landscape (noun) • The landscape was rocky, but what a view. • I couldn’t sleep that night, for the air seemed heavy, so I sat outside. The moon cast great pools of darkness across the flat landscape.

12. What desert landscape looks like.

13. Scorching (adj) • “Don’t you mind the scorching sun burning your lawn?” • The scorching dry season came early. Each day the horizon danced where the shimmering blue sky met the earth’s baking red clay.

14. What scorching feels like.

15. Parched (adj) • “The grass around here looks parched and thirsty from the lack of water.” • The parched earth turned a shiny red as the giant raindrops plopped upon it.

16. What parched looks like.

17. Scrawny (adj) • The trees are scrawny and thin. • I gazed upon our family’s only baobab tree and let my eyes wander up the tree to the scrawny branches. Each branch looked small and separate in the light of the moon.

18. Scrawny trees in the distance

19. Gnarled (adj) • Their gnarled and twisted branches grew slowly. • Grandmother looked at me, then patted the gnarled trunk of the giant baobab tree with her work-worn hand and said, “Go dance, child. Drink the fresh, cold water. And soon I’ll be there too.”

20. This is what gnarled looks like.

21. Progress (noun) • This week at soccer practice I found that I had made progress convincing Janine that Arizona was a great place to live. • I’ll always remember the first day the blue pump worked. No more filling of old trees to get us through the dry season. Progress has come to our village.

22. Create new sentences that show off the context. • Use the chart below to mix and match nouns, verbs, and adjectives to create new and interesting sentences. nouns verbs adjectives Landscape gush scorching Progress bake brimming Village build scrawny Tree pump gnarled Grandmother wrap parched

23. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress The plants and trees began to dry and shrink from the heat of the ___________ sun.

24. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress The plants and trees began to dry and shrink from the heat of the scorching sun.

25. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress The twisted, ____________ branches of the old tree provided little shade for the picnickers.

26. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress The twisted, gnarled branches of the old tree provided little shade for the picnickers.

27. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress The desert hare was thin and _______ from lack of food.

28. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress The desert hare was thin and scrawny from lack of food.

29. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress The heat slowed the explorers _________ across the sand.

30. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress The heat slowed the explorers progress across the sand.

31. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress The summer sun made the land look _______ from the lack of water.

32. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress The summer sun made the land look parched from the lack of water.

33. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress Water ________ from a broken irrigation hose, flooding the crops.

34. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress Water gushed from a broken irrigation hose, flooding the crops.

35. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress The rains transformed the dry, stark ________ into bright fields of green.

36. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress The rains transformed the dry, stark landscape into bright fields of green.

37. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress Soon the buckets were ______ with water from the heavy rain.

38. Brimming Scorching Gushed Scrawny Landscape Gnarled Scorching Progress Soon the buckets were brimming with water from the heavy rain.

39. Denotation and Connotation • Word have literal meanings that we find in dictionaries, but sometimes words have certain feelings or emotions attached to them. • You may like to be called words like thin or slender, but you wouldn’t appreciate being called scrawny or sickly. • All of these words mean about the same things, so why are some of them considered complements and some considered insults?

40. Denotation and Connotation slender-scrawny thin-sickly • The denotation or meaning of these words is close to the same. • The connotation is the positive or negative feeling that comes with the word

41. Denotation and Connotation Read the list of words below. See if you could separate the words based on positive or negative connotation. stubborn cheap leader motivated frugal bossy smirk confident interested smile conceited nosy persuade wealthy intelligent force greedy brainy

42. Extra Practice • Independently work on Practice Book page 101. • You will need to think of a synonym for the words listed to complete the chart. • Pay attention to the connotation label on the top of the chart. • I will collect it tomorrow for a grade.