Synonyms and Antonyms – semantic language skills

Name: Synonyms and Antonyms - semantic language skills
SKU: LIP21-2
Availability: InStock

Description

A good vocabulary is an essential factor in supporting a child’s ability to learn and thrive in the school setting. During literacy development, children need to recognise and understand the direct relationship between the written word and its meaning but also require a depth of understanding of words in their vocabulary.

Synonyms and Antonyms is an addition to our extensive range of packs on semantic language skills and aims to develop an understanding and use of synonyms and antonyms in children aged 6 – 9+ years.

Children with normally developing language skills build up layers of meaning for new words they learn, such as understanding how words can be categorised, synonyms and antonyms, figurative language, multiple meanings and so on. These are known as semantic language skills. This pack is an addition to our extensive range of packs on semantic language skills and aims to develop an understanding and use of synonyms and antonyms in children aged 6 – 9+ years.

Ref: LIP21-2

This resource helps develop an understanding of both synonyms and antonyms.

Synonym is a word having the same, or nearly the same meaning as another. Example: big/huge/enormous.
Antonym is a word having the opposite meaning to another. Examples: fast/slow; big/little; hot/cold.
Activities within this synonyms and antonyms pack include:

Tell the child that you are going to give them some clues to see if they can guess what words you are describing, to show that they understand what lots of words mean. ‘Find something … ’
you wear on your feet
you write or draw with
you have on your face
square/round
blue/red/green
on the wall
you can see out of the window
Point to one picture, for example, the cute dog. Ask the child to draw a line from the cute dog to the picture that is the same … but not quite!
Discuss together what makes the dogs the same – four legs/tails/covered in hair/like to chase balls and so on … and then talk about what makes the dogs different. Cute dog – friendly, happy, playful and so on. Scary dog – big, fierce, nasty, growling and so on.

Age: 6–9+ years

Format: PDF file, 10 pages of introduction and instruction, 23 pages of colour illustrations and activity pages, 23 pages of repeat black and white illustrations included for economy of printing, 59 pages. Available by download

Snippets: Upgrade your account to send specially selected extracts of this resource, via our website, to parents and carers for homework exercises. The snippets for this include the following:

A game to find two things that are nearly the same …but not quite (synonyms). For example, the snakes are the same – no legs, wiggly and smooth. The snakes are different – long/short.
A game to colour in a set of animals and to think of two synonyms to go with the describing word next to each animal. For example, furry – hairy, fluffy, long haired.
An activity to help the child understand that some words mean the opposite of each other (antonyms). For example, empty/full and dry/wet.