Literacy Center: Silly Synonyms Game

Literacy centers are perfect for independent study as well as cooperative learning. But it can be time consuming creating skill centers for your class. This free skill center is a sample from our Skill Center Series that features time-saving, ready-made activities for busy teachers like you!

Follow these easy steps to play this fun game that will challenge students to match similar word meanings. While playing the game, students will get plenty of practice understanding and using synonyms.

Tips for Boosting Vocabulary Skills

Vocabulary instructions should be both organic and planned. Learning new words shouldn’t be a chore. Spark an interest in students to discover new words by discussing unusual words, talking about the history of words, playing word games, and most importantly read, read, read! Try these five tips, plus free downloads to help boost your students vocabulary.

Game-Winning Ideas for Teaching Through Sports

We've got a game-plan to win over your students’ attention! Dive headfirst into a sports themed lesson plan with these game-winning ideas!

Geography
Give each student a blank U.S. map <free download>. Have students use an Atlas to locate their favorite team’s home city and state. Have students mark their blank map with a star on the home city. Then each week students keep track of where their team is playing by finding the city in an atlas, and then marking their map.  Have students answer these questions based on each week’s traveling: Which direction did the team travel? How many miles did they travel from the last city they were in?  How many states did the team travel through to get where they are? How many miles from home is the team? You can even introduce time zones and weather/climate changes.

Language
Have you ever realized how many of our everyday terms and sayings come from sports? Introduce students to sports idioms like: ballpark estimate, behind the eight ball, first out of the gate, come out of left field, dive headfirst, game-plan, get the ball rolling, and many more!  Have students familiarize themselves with these by drawing a picture of the idioms, defining the idioms, and using the idioms in a sentence.

Vocabulary
Make your spelling list sports themed with words like champion, arena, compete, coarse, fitness, performance, or opponent.  Challenge students to see how many times they can find and highlight these words in a sports magazine or newspaper. Have students write a news article about their favorite team using as many of the sports-themed spelling words as possible or use these spelling activities <free download>. We also have a Sports Vocabulary activity book that is packed with over 50 pages of reproducible worksheets all about, you guessed it, sports vocabulary!

Reading
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Pick up the Sports section of your local newspaper and get your students reading about their favorite athletes and teams. When students are more interested in what they are reading, they are sure to stick with it! Try this worksheet of questions students can answer after they read <free download>. Or grab one of Remedia’s high-interest, low readability activity books that focus on sports and famous athletes (click here to view).

Math Sports and math go hand-in-hand. From simple addition to physics and geometry, no matter your students’ math level you have an opportunity to introduce a math concept through sports! We recommend using Teaching Math Through Sports - high-interest, real-world math activities, templates, and lessons featuring hockey, baseball, basketball, skateboarding, the Olympics, and more!