St. Charles has a way with words

By SARAH FOOR

sfoor@vindy.com

A parade of words streamed by St. Charles principal Mary Welsh on Feb. 1, but she only had one in mind to describe the day: “Spontaneous.”

The school’s Vocabulary Parade was brought back to the kindergarten through eighth-graders after a more than five-year break. The event, inspired by the book “Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster” by Debra Frasier, had every student in the school bring a word to life with the use of costumes and props.

After all of the St. Charles students paraded into the school’s gym, Welsh celebrated the hard work of her students.

“Because the inspiration our parade came from a book, we can admit that our idea isn’t original. Our creativity, however, is definitely one-of-a-kind. By looking at the words of your classmates, I challenge you to learn five new words today,” Welsh said to her students.

During a presentation to parents and friends, each student was invited to say their word, define it and show off their costumes. For kindergartners, the words included fisherman and ferocious, and in eighth grade, the selections advanced to words like fulgent and ombudsman.

Eighth-grade teacher Pauline Nagy said her students worked hard to find some of the toughest words in the dictionary.

“They really stretched themselves and looked for new and interesting words. Some selected words I didn’t know either, so I think we all embraced the challenge and learned something new with the project,” Nagy said.

Welsh agreed that the program was embraced fully by her students.

“The students’ enthusiasm and support from families in making each word outfit has been wonderful to see. However, I’m most proud that conversations about words, our vocabularies, and why it’s important has increased tenfold since we began the project,” Welsh said.