A great way to teach language and literature! Capture your childrens' imagination with a jaw-dropping world record and then build on that interest to teach core ideas.

For example, the record-setter for the Language with the Most Words (it’s actually English) leads students into a deeper understanding of affixes and appreciation of the work of lexicographers. The World’s Oldest Propaganda (hint: it’s political) has students identifying types of propaganda and becoming aware of their community. Students read cuneiform, write poetry, outline a screenplay, and even stage a race in a library. A wonderful variety of activities that both deepen and broaden students’ knowledge of language and literature.

Amazing World Records of Language and Literature includes a rich assortment of topics:

World’s First Language • World's Most Widespread Language Family • Language with the Most Words • Language with the Fewest Words • World's First Writing • World's First Computer Language • Country with the Most National Languages • World's Most Endangered Language • World's Oldest Living Language • World's Longest Word • World's Oldest Book • World's Oldest Play • World's Oldest Propaganda • World's First Printing Press • World's Most Popular Book • World's Most Printed Poem • World's Bestselling Author • World's Most Controversial Book • World's Largest Library • World's First Screenplay

Amazing World Records of Language and Literature—20 Lesson Plans

$9.95

Grades 5-9

112 Pages

60 Reproducible Activity Sheets

Hands-On Projects

Teaching Guides

Complete Answer Key

Meets the National Council of Teachers of English/International Reading Association Standards

Part of the Amazing World Records Series of Books

eBook/PDF Download
To the Teacher

1. The World’s First Language

A. The World's First Language

B. Understanding Iconic Language

C. Comparing Possible Early Forms of Language

2. The World's Most Widespread Language Family

A. The World's Most Widespread Language Family

B. Borrowed Words: A Research Project

C. Comparing Languages

3. The Language with the Most Words

A. The Language with the Most Words

B. Synonyms and Antonyms

C. Understanding Lexicography

4. The Language with the Fewest Words

A. The Language with the Fewest Words

B. The Life Cycle of an Invented Language

C. Words that Multitask

5. The World's First Writing

A. The World's First Writing

B. Reading Cuneiform

C. Symbols in Your Community

6. The World's First Computer Language

A. The World's First Computer Language

B. Ambiguity

C. Creating Syntax

7. The Country with the Most National Languages

A. The Country with the Most National Languages

B. Language Bridges

C. Current Events: Language in the U.S.

8. The World's Most Endangered Language

A. The World's Most Endangered Language

B. Back from the Brink: Reviving Languages

C. Endangered Languages and Your Community

9. The World's Oldest Living Language

A. The World's Oldest Living Language

B. Slang

C. Oral History: The Verbal Record

10. The World's Longest Word

A. The World's Longest Word

B. Prefixes and Suffixes

C. Building a Word

WORLD RECORDS OF LITERATURE

11. The World's Oldest Book

A. The World's Oldest Book

B. Inferring Translations

C. Understanding a Story from Images

12. The World's Oldest Play

A. The World's Oldest Play

B. Elements of the Theater

C. Try Your Hand at Writing a Play

13. The World's Oldest Propaganda

A. The World's Oldest Propaganda

B. Identifying Types of Propaganda

C. Analyzing Propaganda in Your Community

14. The World's First Printing Press

A. The World's First Printing Press

B. Before the Printing Press: Block Printing

C. The Power of Printing and the Spread of Ideas

15.The World's Most Popular Book

A. The World's Most Popular Book

B. A Book of Biblical Proportions

C. Memorizing a Passage from a Book

16. The World's Most Printed Poem

A. The World's Most Printed Poem

B. Analyzing a Poem

C. Poetry and You

17. The World's Bestselling Author

A. The World's Bestselling Author

B. Protagonists and Antagonists

C. Literary Criticism: A Book Report

18. The World's Most Controversial Book

A. The World's Most Controversial Book

B. Freedom of Speech in America

C. Critical Thinking: Censorship and You

19. The World's Largest Library

A. The World's Largest Library

B. The Lost Library of Alexandria

C. Using Library Resources: An Intellectual Race

20. The World's First Screenplay

A. The World's First Screenplay

B. Understanding Plot

C. Have You Read the Book?
The Weird, the Wonderful, and Emphatically Not the Everyday

Using WORLD RECORDS to Capture Student Interest and Provide Intellectual and Emotional Context

If you teach kids ages 8 to 15, you should know about Kieran Egan’s simple yet stunning ideas about using world records to reach them.

Kieran Egan is an educational philosopher and the author of The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding.

I. World Records Capture Student Interest

One of Egan’s key ideas is that children between the ages of 8 and 15 are hungry for what he calls “Romantic knowledge.” By providing appropriate instruction, teachers and parents can use this hunger to bring their instruction to a whole new level. Egan writes:

"Students in early adolescence seem most readily engaged...by material such as that compiled in the Guinness Book of Records. That is, they are attracted not to reality in its everyday aspects, but rather to its extremes, to exotica and the bizarre."

The student's imaginative grappling with reality emphasizes
who or what is the biggest, the smallest, the fastest, the slowest, the fattest, the thinnest, the hairiest, etc. It is the mysterious,
the strange, the weird, the wonderful, and emphatically not the everyday that engages the student's imagination.

Put simply, the extremes of the world are exactly what students at

this stage of cognitive development are naturally most interested in.

II. World Records Give Students Context for Knowledge and Self

Students love world records because the records form an outline of the world. As students learn, it is as though they are completing a jigsaw puzzle. Each bit of knowledge they acquire is a piece of the puzzle that needs to fit in somewhere. The world records are like the edge and corner pieces of a puzzle—they form the outline that all other knowledge fits within.

This is extremely intellectually satisfying to the young adolescent mind.

Moreover, its emotionally satisfying as well. Egan explains:

"By discovering the real limits of the world and of human experience, we form a context that enables us to establish some security and to establish proportionate meaning within it. Knowing about the biggest and smallest...allows us, on the one hand, to wonder at their extreme sizes, but, on the other hand, to be reassured about our own scale. Once we have some sense of context, we can begin to develop some sense of proportionate meaning of things."

Helping kids develop “some sense of proportionate meaning,” arguably, is the ultimate goal of every teacher and parent.

III. World Records Are Easy to Integrate into Your Teaching

To Egan, the young adolescents’ interest in world records is undeniable. Their “interest in these features of reality is,” he writes, “so obvious.” So he was troubled that this type of learning wasn’t being used by educators to reach and teach students. “It is a little odd,” he writes,” that the 8-to-15 year olds’ enjoyment of books, TV shows, and films that deal with the exotic and extreme has had so

little impact on curriculum....”

This “little impact on curriculum” has been unfortunate. Happily, however, integrating world records into your teaching is remarkably easy.

World Records are the perfect bellringer or launchpad for discussion. For geography, ask, “What is the world’s longest river?” In government, ask, “What is world’s oldest government?” In history, ask, “What was the world’s oldest city?” In economics, ask, “What was the world’s first industry?” In cultural studies ask, “What is the world’s most diverse country?”

And so on. By asking questions like these, you immediately reach the parts your students that are already intellectually and emotionally hungry. By basing further instruction on world records, you will provide your students with a “sense of context” so that they may “begin to develop some sense of proportionate meaning of things.”

And isn’t that why we teach?

Educational Books for Teachers, Parents, and Kids

Amazing World Records of Language and Literature—20 Lesson Plans

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Why Teaching with "World Records" Works

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