Standard 4: Vocabulary

Students will expand their working vocabularies to effectively communicate and understand texts.

Student Actions 

Teacher Actions 

• Students will continue to infer relationships among synonyms, antonyms, homographs and homonyms.
• Students will infer relationships among words with multiple meanings.

• Teachers explain and review synonyms and antonyms.
• Teachers provide opportunities for students to practice inferring relationships among synonyms, antonyms, homographs and homonyms.
• Teachers monitor and provide opportunities for students to receive feedback when inferring relationships among synonyms, antonyms, homographs, and homonyms.
• Teachers explain that multiple meaning words are words that can have several meanings (e.g., pitcher, park, left).
• Teachers model and provide examples using multiple meaning words.
• Teachers provide opportunities for students to use multiple meaning words.
• Teachers monitor and provide opportunities for students to receive feedback when using multiple meaning words.

Supporting Resources 

Teacher Insights 

• Multiple-meaning words are words that are spelled the same, are pronounced the same, but have different meanings that can be determined based on the context of the text. Multiple-meaning words can also be called homonyms.

• Example: I will park the car so we can walk to the park.

• Example: I left my phone on the left side of my desk.

• Synonyms are words which have the same meaning (e.g. example, instance, occurrence)

• Antonyms are words which have opposite meanings (e.g., hot and cold).

• There are acute differences between homonyms, homographs, and homophones.

• Homonyms are words that have the same spelling but different meanings and origins (e.g., left [not right] and left [to leave behind]).

• Homographs are words that are spelled the same but are not necessarily pronounced the same and having different meanings and origins (e.g., tear [from the eye] and tear [rip open] ).

• Homophones are words that have the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling (e.g., new and knew).

• For more information and clarification on these, the following article is helpful: Homonyms, Homophones, and Homographs for ESL Students.

• Inferring is making a reasonable assumption about meaning that is not explicitly stated in the text.

• The intent of this standard is for students to experience the process of inferring and to apply the skill of making reasonable assumptions by closely examining how words are related to each other (based on synonyms, antonyms, or multiple-meanings) for the purpose of vocabulary development.

Due to recursive nature of the standards, it is essential that teachers are aware of how all objectives within and between strands work together for optimal instruction.