54. Word Webs

Here is an exciting way to help enhance and expand vocabulary. It is a way to make words come alive! Your students will enjoy a lifetime of learning from it.

It is also about thinking holographically, building new neuro-pathways and bi-cameral cross-firing – which is part of our natural design and capability. We just have to practice it!

Let’s start with a verb. How about the verb, LEARN? Why not?

Imagine the word LEARN at the center of a vast and intricate, beautiful three dimensional web.

Then ask what words surround this word? What words is it connected to? What words are its closest friends and relatives?

Here we go: assimilate, gather, master, comprehend, apprehend, ascertain, find out, search, detect, realize, determine, acquire, understand, grok, study, pick up, discover etc…

These are some of the close in connections to the word, each with its own nuance and connotation describing the word LEARN.

But now, let’s add some dimensionality to our word search. For example – what color is LEARNING? Why not? Is there such a thing as red learning, blue learning or green learning? Let’s try it out!

The color red is compressed and compact; bold and bright; lineal, logical, deductive reasoning. You see red related to martial arts, marching, mars, March and Aries. Red seems to work really well as a Stop sign, doesn’t it? So… command, order, organization, rank and file etc. All this and more seems to go well with the nature and frequency of the color RED.

So what is RED LEARNING or to LEARN in a RED way?

Perhaps we could look at it this way:

RED LEARN process words

Repetition, Rote, Assimilate, Deduction, Concentrate, Focus, Linear, Sequential, Pattern Symmetry, Precision, Result Oriented, End Products, Question and Answer, Diagnostic…

Whereas, looking at the word LEARN through the color blue would provide a different perspective:

BLUE LEARN process words

Intuitive, Instinctive, Inductive, Acclimatizing, Naturalizing, Catching the Way of It, Question Muse, Expanding, Oblique and Adjacent, Process Oriented, Sensory…

GREEN LEARN…

Spontaneous, Innovative, First time every time, Discovery, Search, Conductive, Propositional, Cause and Process Oriented, Energizing, Interactive, Integrated, Analogous, Unpredictable, Experiential…

All of these words now belong to our multi-dimensional web of word to do with the verb – LEARN. Just for starters. And we haven’t even opened the dictionary or thesaurus yet. Cool!

To be continued…

~PAZ

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