Semantic activities focus on learning new vocabulary and/or thinking about words and their relationships.
Semantic activities may focus on one of the following:
Learning vocabulary in or related to the story (check out a print and go vocab freebie below)
Synonyms & Antonyms
Associations and Categories
Words with multiple meanings
💡 Activity ideas:
Create a word wall (e.g. arranged by part of speech, alphabetically, with lists of synonyms/antonyms)
Create a personal dictionary or journal for each student
Formulate a sentence using the vocabulary target in the context of the story
Determine the part of speech
Analyze prefixes and suffixes
Incorporate the target vocabulary words into a story retell task or when creating a parallel story
If the target word is a noun, describe it
If the target word is a verb, act it out
If the target word is an adjective, make a list of things or events that the adjective describes
Reference:
Ukrainetz, T. A. (2006). Contextualized Language Intervention: Scaffolding Prek-12 Literacy Achievement (1st ed.). Pro Ed.