Dealing With Dictionaries

       Interest in dictionaries has been observed very early. A child in a kindergarten received a letter from her grandfather saying that he had seen a chickaree in the tree outside his window. "What is a chickaree?" asked the five year old. "My mother and daddy don't know." The teacher, too, admitted she did not know, but she knew how they could find out. They would go to the library and look up "chick- aree" in the dictionary the big, unabridged dictionary. The class went to the library. All saw the enormous book. And they watched the teacher turn to the letter C and look up "chickaree." To their delight, the teacher read the definition of chickaree and its more common substitute, "red squirrel." Following this experience, the children on several other occasions called the teacher's attention to the necessity of looking up a word. 

       Once introduced to the dictionary in a way which reveals its fascination, children are eager to own one and to use it. Many eight year olds want their own dictionary. And it is to their credit that they quickly learn the inadequacies of the pocket-size dictionaries and demand larger, less-abridged editions. A good dictionary is essential for every home where reading is a live experience. In schools an unabridged edition should be made easily accessible, perhaps in the library, to every group. Older groups may need one within their grade rooms. Developing proper understanding and use of this vital reading aid should be made pleasurable and personally profitable to each child. Cut-and-dried dictionary exercises of the type once passively endured by some of us should be avoided. These dull exercises which were so earnestly given repelled us from dictionary use rather than lured us to it. We were fortunate if later experiences changed our attitude toward looking up words. 

       With their spirited imaginations, children have devised many good games involving the dictionary. Teachers would perform a real service if they would make a collection of these games and share them with each other. Take this one, for example. A child opens the dictionary to any page at random. He says, "I have the dictionary open on an M page." Each child in the group then guesses a word beginning with the letter M. The child guessing the word alphabetically nearest the first word on the page is the winner. The winner opens the dictionary to another page, and the game continues. Another game which children enjoy is to ask a child to mention a word, and then have the other children race to see who will be first to locate it in his own dictionary. These games are appropriate for the younger readers who love to guess and find out. Older children can devise games appropriate to their ability which require looking up the meaning or pronunciation of words. Not only do such games offer recreation, they also develop a fine learning atmosphere, which is the basis for good reading.

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