Give your class the advantage of Thesaurus Power! They will use a thesaurus to understand word meanings and relationships. They focus on how a thesaurus functions and how it gives the entry word, definition, synonyms, antonyms, and part...

Use the Visual Thesaurus to predict the subject matter of Rick Riordan's book The Lightning Thief. A pre-reading activity encourages middle schoolers to use context clues and word meaning to discover what the book is about. After...

Using Visual Thesaurus software, class members participate in a computer-based spelling bee. Then they work in groups to analyze the words and use deductive reasoning to infer spelling patterns. They then present one of their "rules" to...

Finding engaging ways to help your middle schoolers build their vocabulary is not easy to do. The activity presented here offers a great way to motivate them to build vocabulary by making it into a game. Teams of pupils use a dictionary...

Students love the opportunity of going to the library to jump into that one comfy chair in the whole room with a book, or be a lucky one to get to the computers before anyone else. But knowing how to locate books and other reference...

Young scholars investigate new vocabulary words with a fun, collaborative activity. Given a deck of word cards, pairs of students flip over one at a time and independently look up the term in a dictionary. They then take turns rolling a...

Celebrate Opposite Day by using a Visual Thesaurus to match words to their antonyms. They match a list of vocabulary words to their antonym counterparts using the Visual Thesaurus, and then they play Antonym Bingo with the words from...

Kids are asked to choose the one option that is not a synonym for the provided keyword on a synonym worksheet.

Students navigate the Visual Thesaurus to find keywords for research.  In this keywords lesson, students use synonyms, hypernyms and hyponyms to find keywords. Students understand why some searches are effective and some are...

Introduce your high schoolers to some tough vocabulary. No, I'm not talking about the SAT list! Revisit Victorian literature to find tricky words we still use today. Using the Visual Thesaurus, learners will preview vocabulary in a quote...

Students discover how to use a thesaurus. For this language arts lesson, students explore thesauruses as they look up words and write sentences for the new words they encounter.

Students become familiar with the Thesaurus as a resource.  For this Thesaurus lesson, students complete a worksheet by finding other words to replace the given word and use the  word in a sentence.

Students examine synonyms and practice finding appropriate synonyms in a thesaurus. In this use synonyms to make your writing vivid lesson, students identify the correct usage of synonyms. Students replace incorrect synonyms in...

Kids paraphrase an entry from The Elements of Style, and then revise a sentence. They use the Visual Thesaurus and find synonyms for the phrase very pretty, brainstorm a list of intensifiers (as alternatives to really and very),...

What is a root word? What is a prefix? Suffix? Use these questions to spark a discussion amongst your language art learners. Then, start by writing the word irresistible on the board and have teams of learners attempt to create new words...

Students act as math coaches to solve word problems. In this math word problems lesson, students brainstorm key words in math operations, create flash cards to review relationships between words and operations, coach each other in the...

Students use a thesaurus to expand their usage of language in their written work.  In this thesaurus lesson, students work with the reference book to add variety to their word choices. Students then adjust their spoken ,...

Students discover how to engage all their senses and powers of observation to effectively communicate and idea or emotion. Using Inspiration Software, they create a vocabulary web and practice using descriptive language to clarify and...

Students study spelling words. In this word study instructional activity, students use the Visual Thesaurus and play the Visual Thesaurus Spelling Bee.

Lois Lowry's The Giver is one of the most engaging and thought-provoking works of literature in the middle school curriculum. Round out your novel unit with a collection of reading activities, comprehension questions, memoir and...

Shape shifters recognize characteristics of polygons. Embracing language arts skills in addition to math, they use a thesaurus to pinpoint specific attributes of a set of polygons. They also participate in a 21-question guessing game...

Students review key physics terms using a Visual Thesaurus. In this science lesson, student groups compete against each other to correctly identify "imposter" words from a list of related physics vocabulary terms.

Scholars identify word relationships, categorize words, and identify similarities and differences between word meanings.

A class discussion on reference materials opens up a instructional activity on how to use these important resources. They discover that dictionaries, glossaries, and thesauruses are called word reference resources, and they practice...