Summary
The Electric Company enters the high-stakes Wordball championship — a series of increasingly tricky word challenges inspired by a classic idiom. As the team works through each round they stop to unpack what idioms really mean and why 'the world is my oyster' has nothing to do with shellfish. Vocabulary spotlight: brilliant, genius, memorize, performance. A lively entry point for figurative language and reading comprehension.
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Teaching resources
Discussion questions
Discussion
Idioms are phrases that mean something different from the literal words — 'break a leg' doesn't mean break your actual leg!
- What does 'the world is my oyster' actually mean? What made the team realize it wasn't about shellfish?
- Think of another idiom you've heard. What does it really mean? How would you figure that out if you'd never heard it before?
- Why do authors use idioms in writing instead of just saying exactly what they mean?
Quick work-a-long
Vocabulary: idiom, figurative language, context clue, literal, meaning.
Try it: Write an idiom, its literal meaning, and its real meaning in a three-column chart. Draw a silly picture of the literal meaning and a picture of the real meaning side by side.