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Synonyms and Antonyms

English · Year 2–Year 6

Drag the words into two boxes: means the same, or means the opposite.

About the synonyms

One word at the top, six words on the tray, and two boxes: means the same, and means the opposite. Drag each word into a box. Drag it out again if the class changes its mind, and nothing is lost.

Both boxes are drawn big enough to hold all six on purpose. Three places in each would tell a class the split is three and three before anybody had read a word.

The board waits until all six are down. Then it either says every word is in the right box, or it names the first one that is not and what it means: put small in the same box and it says small means the opposite of big. That is the rule being applied rather than a cross on somebody’s work.

Every word in the bank is unambiguous, or it is not in the bank. Warm is not a synonym of hot and it is not an antonym either; hard has two meanings, so the opposite of one has nothing to do with the other. A class arguing about that is arguing about the word list rather than about synonyms.

Twelve key words run from Year 2 vocabulary to Year 6: big, happy, old, dark, wet, cold, fast, loud, brave, strong, clean and difficult. They are behind the Word button on the toolbar, which says which one is on the board, because twelve buttons is more than a toolbar row can hold.

How to use it on your whiteboard

  1. 1Drag a word from the tray into one of the two boxes.
  2. 2Drag a word out of a box to move it, or press Start again to empty both.
  3. 3When all six are down the board says whether they are all in the right box.
  4. 4Press the Word button for another six: it names the word on the board and opens the other eleven.
  5. 5Press Show me to sort them, for reading back rather than working out.

Questions

What is a synonym?
A word that means the same, or nearly the same, as another: large, huge and enormous are all synonyms of big. An antonym is a word that means the opposite, so small, tiny and little are antonyms of big.
Why is there no tap to place a word?
Because there are two boxes and a tap could not say which. Everything else in this product taps where there is one place a thing can go and drags where there is a choice, and here the choice is the whole activity.
Can a class get it wrong?
The board never says so. It names the first word that is in the other box and says what that word means, which is the thing to think about, and there is no score.