Antonyms: It’s Opposite Day!

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

This lesson is all about opposites or, as skilled readers and writers call them, antonyms!

Knowing about, recognizing, and using antonyms will help you use more descriptive words (and understand more descriptive words!) when you are both reading and writing.

You have probably heard of synonyms before. Synonyms are words that have the same or similar meaning.

For example, beautiful and stunning mean the same thing, so they are synonyms. Abnormal, strange, and unusual are also synonyms to each other.

While synonyms mean the same, antonyms are words that have the opposite meaning of each other.

The way I remember which is a synonym and which is an antonym is:

Knowing antonyms helps grow your vocabulary because you know more words, which will help your writing be more detailed and descriptive. It will make your writing less boring! Everyone wants that!

Let me show you what I mean:

If I have a sentence in my writing saying, "I was tired," that sounds pretty simple and not that exciting.

If I think of an antonym for tired….hmm, how about energetic? That means the opposite!

Now, I can say, "I wasn't feeling energetic."

• That has the same meaning as the first sentence I wanted to write, but doesn't it sound more exciting?

Stop and Go, Yes and No: What is an Antonym? by Brian Cleary helps explains antonyms in a fun way too! Check it out.

Stop and Go, Yes and No|What Is An Antonym? Book Read Aloud For Children from amandpmstorytime:

• Did you recognize any of the antonyms in the story?
• Did any match the opposites you thought of at the beginning of this lesson?

Check out these other common antonyms that you might recognize:

• Did you know that some words can even have more than one antonym?

Agree has the antonyms of disagree, reject, resist, and object. Wow!

• Ready to try it out in the Got It? section?