Search for Synonyms: A Thesaurus Lesson

Students will expand their vocabulary and learn the advantages of using a Thesaurus. Students will edit and enrich personal writing samples using both print and online Thesauri.

A lesson plan for grade 3 English Language Arts

By Erin Bradfeldt and Joan Milliken

About the authors

The authors are all teachers at Lake Norman Elementary School in Iredell County. Joan Milliken is the Media Coordinator, Kathy Beck is the Technology Specialist, Erin Bradfeldt and Amy Luna are Fourth Grade teachers.

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Related topics

• Learn more about English language arts.

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Learning outcomes

By introducing and explaining how to use a thesaurus, students will be encouraged to expand their writing skills using synonyms. Use of synonyms will also make writing samples more exciting. Instead of writing the word run, students might substitute jog, trot, dash, race, or sprint.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

2 days

Materials/resources

Set of Thesauri, we used Scholastic Children’s Thesaurus by John K. Bollard. (Scholastic Trade; ISBN: 0590967851)

Writing Samples of student’s work.

Highlighters or colored pencils.

Technology resources

Computers with both word processing software and Internet Access

Pre-activities

Students will need to bring a writing sample to the Media Center and/or Computer Lab for this lesson.

This writing sample can be a complete story the students are working on, or it could be a portion of the story, such as a beginning paragraph.

Activities

Library Media Center Activities

1. Explanation of thesaurus and synonyms will be given. Each student will be given a Scholastic Children’s Thesuarus.
2. Students will highlight words in their story that are “weak” or “boring”. For example: He walked down the busy street.
3. Students will use a print thesaurus to look up all of the words that they highlighted.
4. Students will edit their stories using the more descriptive words they found in the thesaurus. For example: He hiked down the busy street. He marched down the busy street.

Computer Lab Activities

1. Explanation of thesaurus and synonyms will be given. Students will be shown how to use the tool bar of the word processing system to access the thesaurus and/or how to access an online thesuarus program.
2. Students will highlight words in their story that are “weak” or “boring”. For example: He walked down the busy street.
3. Students will use the word processing Thesaurus and/or online thesaurus program to look up all of the words that they highlighted.
4. Students will edit their stories using the more descriptive words they found in the Thesaurus. For example: He hiked down the busy street. He marched down the busy street.

Assessment

Informal Assessment: Student’s editing will be monitored and reviewed. If words from their original stories are changed appropriately, then accomplishment will be noted.

Ongoing assessment also follows this activity. The classroom teacher will watch for use of synonyms and strong words as future student writing assignments are reviewed.

Supplemental information

Rubric: xls | rtf

Related websites

Roget’s Thesaurus

Comments

This was a collaborative unit created by the school Media Coordinator, Technology Specialist and Two Fourth Grade Teachers.