Synonyms For Said. How Can You Get Children To Use Better Verbs For Said?

Synonyms for said. How can you get children to use better verbs for said? This is a very simple idea but I think it is so effective that I wanted to share it. The idea behind this is to give the students a visual reference behind the words they are using. I noticed early on in my teaching career that students tended to use words that they know were good even if they didn’t know what they meant or even if it was in the correct context. I also noticed that a lot of students tended to use the word said a lot because this was an easy option (plus something that is used in a lot of their reading books which I don’t like). Anyway they don’t know why they should use better words unless this is explained to them. It is important to get across that when writing, the reader needs to get to know the characters, whether they like that person or not. Good guys need to be likable but bad guys need to be, well bad!

If they use simple verbs to show how people are feeling, or how they react to a situation then it makes it a lot easier for the reader to do that. Adverbs added to this sentence can help the idea of good guy/bad guy too. Then talk about how you know what people are feeling? Said is a non-descriptive verb which does not help the reader one little bit. Students need to recognise this. The third option is to use the two first options together – laughed quietly. A great way to do this is to use smiles to help the children recognise the similarities with the words. It also helps them to develop the idea of a characters emotions are related to how they say things – this will in turn relate to their writing and creating deeper characters. Dozens of Reproducible Word Lists for Helping Students Choose Just-Right Words to Strengthen Their Writing Buy Now How does it work? They can then write down these synonyms for said underneath the smiley and keep this for future reference.

You could even make a class display for this work and encourage the children to get out of their seats to use it when they are stuck. And I hope you get the idea. I tended to start this lesson off by placing the smiles on the board and ask students to say how they are feeling. Using a smart board I then scribed their ideas down next to the pictures. What I did with my year 3 class is split an A4 size piece of paper into six sections. Or you could get the students to work in groups. This is especially good if you have a class where they don’t work together quiet well yet so need more encouragement. The students who do not work in a group at all well can work alongside yourself so you can model the behaviour they need to exhibit in order to complete a task like this. Each group can be given the same sheet – which is blown up to A3 size.

They then have a competion between the groups to find at least five different words which can be used instead of said. The way I set this competition up is to have a grid drawn on the board with a group name at the top. A team leader is picked who is the only one who can move from the group. It is his/her job to go to the board when the group has finished and then sign their name in the square. The winning group get rewarded somehow. Once the groups have completed their worksheet for this, it can be displayed somewhere near their table. Another idea is to have lots of smileys around the room on desks. Next to each should be a few whiteboard pens and sugar paper, with the picture in the middle. The idea here is once the students leave the carpet they are to go around the room and write down as many different synonyms as they can find within five minutes on the picture they are looking at. Once the five minutes is up then they move onto the next.

And never forget the bonus of giving this for homework. If I were to do this, I would send home a second sheet of paper which explains what I want from the child so they and their parents know what to do. What do you notice about all these words you have found? If I was angry, would that make me a bad person? How do you know if someone was a nasty person or just in a bad mood because something bad had happenede to them? If I was feeling angry/happy how would I be speaking? Which words would you use for a bad/good guy when writing? Which words do you like best that you could steal/magpie for your writing? And I’m sure you can think of many more examples. And the last bit from me! You will of course have to make your own worksheet for this as I haven’t found a way to include it on here yet but hopefully from the pictures above you can see what they students will achieve from this. It is such an easy way for children to uplevel their work. Using the smiles too help the children to visualise their writing in a fun way. Middle School Lesson PlansGuide to punctuation and ideas of how to teach the topics.