Semantic activities focus on learning new vocabulary and/or thinking about words and their relationships.
Semantic skills include:
🎯 Learning vocabulary in or related to the story
🎯 Synonyms & antonyms
🎯 Associations
🎯 Categories
🎯 Describing
🎯 Words with multiple meanings
🎯 Basic concepts (e.g. qualitative, spatial, temporal)
🎯 Comparatives & superlatives (e.g. big, bigger, biggest)
🎯 Prefixes & suffixes
💡 Here are some fun ideas for targeting some of these skills! 💡
Vocabulary:
Create a personal vocabulary dictionary or journal for each student
synonyms & antonyms:
Choose a word from the text. Work with students to generate synonyms/antonyms.
Then have students go on a scavenger hunt around the room to find items that the synonym/antonym describes (e.g. soft and hard, wet and dry, long and short).
After they find their item, students can make a sentence about their item using the synonym/antonym. Talk about if their items are similar to the item from the story or the opposite.
Describing & categories:
Version 1: Write nouns from the story on pieces of paper or sticky notes. Each student draws one from a bag and describes it to the group while the group tries to guess it. Or each student could just choose an object from the pictures in the story.
Version 2: Put a sticky note on Student A's forehead (or in a headband from the HedBanz game) and have each student in the group describe the item for Student A to guess
prefixes & suffixes:
Select a prefix/suffix featured in the text. Give students a root word and meaning of the target affix/suffix. Have them determine the target word using the root and affix/suffix.
Want even more ideas? Take a peek at these blog posts:
Before you go...if you're looking for a no-prep or print and go resource that has a variety of activities already done for you, then take a peek at my:
I hope this has been helpful 💛
Reference:
Ukrainetz, T. A. (2006). Contextualized Language Intervention: Scaffolding Prek-12 Literacy Achievement (1st ed.). Pro Ed.