Dictionary skills: salt flat lizard
The Grammar Bit!
Learning how to use a dictionary is an important skill. Dictionaries can be used to help you understand the meaning of a word. They can also be used to help you spell a word correctly.
Dictionaries are ordered alphabetically with words that begin with A at the front and those that begin with Z at the back. Once you have found the general location of a word in the dictionary, you will need to look at the second and sometimes the third letters of a word to find its exact location.
Read the three scintillating sentences opposite. With your talk partner, use a dictionary to quickly locate one of the words highlighted in bold. How quickly were you able to do this? What is the meaning of this word?
Scintillating Sentences
1) In the Atacama Desert, the camouflaged salt flat lizard spends its whole life searching for water.
2) Mirages, caused by the bending of light, make lakes magically appear from out of thin air.
3) The salt flat lizard scuttled across the dry, barren land in search of juicy brine flies.
Did you know?
Salt flat lizards must eat up to 400 brine flies a day if they are to get enough water to survive in the salty plains of the Atacama Desert.