Monday
Monday: Shades of Meaning
Rocket drops a stack of sticky notes on the Signal Desk. Each one has a single word on it.
"Walked. Trudged. Strolled. Marched," he reads. "They all mean walked. So why does my ramp report feel flat?"
Raven lines the notes up the corkboard like a ladder, from softest to strongest. "What do you notice?"
"Strolled sounds like a sunny day," Rocket says. "Trudged sounds like wet socks."
Nova hovers beside the top note, her light warming the paper. "Same meaning, different weather," she says. "Which weather was Saturday?"
Rocket grins and grabs a pencil. "Wet socks. Definitely trudged."
Learn it: denotation and connotation
Denotation is the plain dictionary meaning of a word. Connotation is the feeling the word carries with it.
Walked, trudged and strolled share one denotation: moved on foot. Their connotations are different.
Trudged carries tiredness. Strolled carries ease. Marched carries purpose. The writer picks the shade that fits.
Raven thinks aloud: "The text says Rocket trudged home, so I can infer that he was tired or unhappy."
- Find a word that could have been something plainer.
- Ask what the plain meaning is. That is the denotation.
- Ask what feeling the word adds. That is the connotation.
- Ask how the sentence would change with a different shade.
| Plain word | Softer shade | Stronger shade |
|---|---|---|
| said | murmured | announced |
| looked | glanced | stared |
| big | roomy | enormous |
| cold | cool | freezing |
- Read the question.
- Tap your answer.
Read it
Rocket had one sentence left in his report about the skate ramp. It said: It rained on Saturday.
"True," said Raven, reading over his shoulder, "but I cannot see it. What kind of rain?"
Rocket tried again. It drizzled on Saturday. He frowned. Drizzle sounded gentle, like a mist you could skate through.
But nobody had skated. The ramp had been a river by ten in the morning.
He crossed it out. It poured on Saturday. Better. Poured sounded heavy, like a bucket turned over the whole street.
Still, poured did not sound like anything. Rocket closed his eyes and listened to his memory.
The rain had hit the plywood ramp hard and fast, over and over, like someone practicing on a drum.
"It drummed on the ramp," he said out loud. Raven looked up. "Now I can hear it."
Nova dimmed her light a little, the way she did when a sentence landed well.
Rocket wrote the line down and read the whole report again. One word had changed, and the day was back.
Drizzled, poured, drummed. Each one meant rain. Only one of them sounded like Saturday.
- Read the question.
- Tap your answer.
| Sentence | True or false? |
|---|---|
| Rocket started with the sentence: It rained on Saturday. | ? |
| Poured sounded gentle to Rocket. | ? |
| The rain hit the ramp like someone practicing on a drum. | ? |
| Rocket changed every word in the report. | ? |
- Read the question.
- Tap your answer.
Write three shades of it on three sticky notes, softest to strongest.
Stick them in a ladder where you do your reading this week.
A ladder of words is a tool you can carry anywhere. Tomorrow we learn what to do when a word is a stranger.