Week 5 Term 3 - Close Meaning + Opposite Meaning Words

Dr Jannie's 'Word Group' program has come to a halt since we have been in lockdown. Just before we went into lockdown, Dr Jannie met with 9KLe and took them through one of the final steps of the program - finding words who have close meaning and opposite meaning to 'survive'. Here is a run down of how that lesson went. 

Review of Word Association

• Dr Jannie gives feedback on the word association activity that the students completed.
• She has encouraged the students to check their word associations and explanations, the students are to check it out and to make sure that they have justified their word associations.
• They are to then look at their peers word associations and to find their best word association/explanation.
• The students will share with each other their word associations and explanations.
• The instructions are: 1) Check out your association(s) and the explanation you’ve written. 2) Clear, well explained 3) linked to ‘survive’ and 4) correctly punctuated.
• Students then share which association stood out for them from the PowerPoint Student Word Association

Next step: Close Meaning + Opposite Meaning Words

• The students are to come up with 8 words in total - four words that have close meaning to ‘survive’ and four words that have opposite meanings to survive.
• We will then compile a list of words as a class. The student has to remember what the underlying meaning of ‘survive’ is when compiling the list (to stay live for now and for the future)

Feedback: Student list of words that have a similar meaning to ‘survive’
Adapt (association word but not similar in meaning)
Live
Existing
Remain
Continue
Living
Outlast
Outlive
Overcome
Persevere
Carry on
Endure
Withstand
Alive
Sustain

Feedback: Student list of words that have opposite meaning to ‘survive’
Extinct
Neglect
Discontinue
Cease
Die
Dead
Depart
Expire
Non existing
Non living
Perish
Fade

Students will make a table of close and opposite meaning words and then write sentences using the words.

MY THOUGHTS: 

This was a great lesson, the students enjoyed it and they were able to really think - dig deep - into word associations. It is unfortunate that this has come to a pause but I am confident that when we do get back into, it will pick up from where it left. The whole point of breaking down each phase is so that the students can do this fluently when they are given new focus words. Once the teaching is done, Dr Jannie would like to break the students into 3 or 4 groups and get each group to focus on a different springboard word (like 'to survive') from our focus text, Brian Paulsen's 'Hatchet'.