Jabberwocky and Context Clues

Objective

Using Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwocky, students will try to infer the parts of speech and meanings of nonsense words. Then they can try their hand at their own nonsense poems.

Find some possible definitions of the nonsense words at Wikipedia.

Steps

1. First students will try to define nonsense words from stanzas three and four.
2. Then they rank those words based on how certain they are of their meaning.
3. Finally, students can try their hand at writing their own nonsense poetry (and test their context clues on other students).

Resources

• The Full Poem (PDF)
• Step 1 - Context Worksheet (PDF)
• Step 1 - Context Worksheet (Google Slides)
• Step 2- Ranking Words (PDF)
• Step 2- Ranking Words (Google Slides)