Synonyms and Antonyms
Objective: To enhance their writing skills by being able to provide variety in their written work using antonyms and synonyms.
Grade Level: grade 5
Standards Alignment
Content Standards: Standard V
Learning Goals: Defining antonym and synonym. Understand how to use them will help with their reading comprehension and enable them to use more variety in their writing.
Skills Development: Building their vocabulary
Internet Resources

Lesson Plans: The following web site gives an entire lesson plan which will be used as the main lesson to introduce synonyms and antonyms to the students.

http://www.teachnet.com/lesson/langarts/terminology/synandant.html

Web Sites/ Web Pages:

The following websites have activities that could be incorporated into different educational centers for small groups of students to rotate through.

Classroom Resources
Materials: thesaurus; magazines; large cards with a word accompanyied by several smaller cards with their antonyms; large cards with a word accompanyied by several smaller cards with their synonyms; juggling words printout
Equipment: chalkboard or overhead; computers
Lesson Development
Introduction: Stories can be exciting and interesting if you use a variety of words to tell a story. In order to write an interesting piece of work, it can be helpful to know what an antonym and a synonym are. Learning these terms and how to use them will help with your reading comprehension and enable you to use more variety in your writing.
Task: You will learn the definition of a synonym and an antonym. You will be given several words and be expected to give other words that have the same meaning (synonym) and other words that have an opposite meaning (antonym). For instance, students will be given the word happy. They would then possibly list joyful, blissful, delighted or thrilled as examples of synonyms. When listing antonyms, they might use sad, depressed or somber as their examples. Once they have a grasp of antonyms and synonyms, they can work on the lesson listed at teachnet.com: http://www.teachnet.com/lesson/langarts/terminology/synandant.html.

Once completing this activity and sharing student work, the student can embark on other activities to further reinforce what they have learned. See Web Sites/ Web Pages listed above.

Outcome/Assessment:

  1. Once the students have completed the various assignments, they should be able to rewrite a paragraph that uses a repeating word to demonstrate their understanding of antonyms or synonyms.

    Example of paragraph given to student: The student could replace the word wonderful with antonyms and then rewrite the same paragraph with synonyms.

    Julie had a wonderful time at the dance. The music and atmosphere were wonderful. She wore a wonderful dress. The food and beverages were wonderful. The people were very wonderful. She wished the wonderful evening would never end. Overall, she had a wonderful time.

    Some possible synonyms: magnificent, superb, amazing, fantastic, brilliant, great. Students can get their list of synonyms by using a Thesaurus or plugging in the terms at the following website: http://vancouver-webpages.com/synonyms.html

    Students will rewrite the paragraph using synonyms, so that the paragraph has the same meaning, but is more interesting. Give students a paragraph and have them replace words with antonyms so that the paragraph has the opposite meaning.

  2. For review of synonyms, they could take an on-line quiz at The English Department: http://the_english_dept.tripod.com/students.html#synonym

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