Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Teaching Synonyms and Antonyms


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I try to create a year-long unit of vocabulary words for my Spanish students to work on. Last year we did rhyming words. This year we will be working with synonyms and antonyms. Here's a look at what we will be doing with these words and a few children's book suggestions...

I have used these three sets of cards for the unit:

Synonyms in Spanish
Antonyms, Part 1
Antonyms, Part 2

There are several things that you can do with these cards:

-Memory

-Go Fish

-Lay the cards out on the floor.  Call out a card.  A student has to find that card and its mate {either synonym or antonym}.

-The Slapping Game (No slapping of each other!!): Lay out the cards on the floor.  Call out a word.  The first student to put their hand on the correct card gets to keep the card.  The goal is to have the most cards at the end.  You can vary this by calling out a word on a card, but they must slap the synonym or antonym for it.

-Lay out the cards and spell a word in Spanish (provided your students already know the letters) and see if they can find the card.  Then can they find the synonym or antonym and spell that for you?

-Use picture dictionaries like Everyday Words in Spanish . Call out a word and see if they can find it in the dictionary.

-For the antonyms: Call out three words in succession. Have your students say the opposites for them. For example, you say, "arriba, blanco, arriba". You students say, "abajo, negro, abajo".  Or you say, "corto mucho, gordo". Your students say "largo, poco, flaco". This activity is challenging so only use it once kids have mastered the words.

Here are some books that relate to opposites:

Opuestos-A simple opposites book for little ones.
Perro grande... Perro pequeño
Arriba y Abajo-The story of a penguin that wants to fly
Donde esta la oveja verde?
Cerdota Grandota-This is one of my favorite opposite books!

Do you have more teaching or book ideas for synonyms and/or antonyms? I would love to hear them!

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