If we let them, there are students that would give us simple sentences in their writing as it requires very little thought or effort.

However, there are also many of our learners who do enjoy being challenged to improve their writing and make it more interesting.

By stretching our students vocabulary, introducing new words, meanings, and synonyms, students will be empowered to create more interesting and engaging sentences. Not only will explicit teaching of vocabulary assist with writing but you will find improvements also in your students reading and comprehension.

One way we can challenge our students to improve on their writing, and express their ideas in a different way is to use synonyms to replace typical words that are repeated often such as said or walk. This can be done through YouTube videos on synonyms, brainstorming as a class; getting everyone’s input and creating concept maps.

Having this work bank displayed in the classroom, allows your students to recycle these words time and time again. They may be on the wall on posters, flashcards or desk cards.

Some common examples to get you started include;

Said – yelled, stammered, cried, shouted, questioned, asked, whispered, sobbed, explained, muttered, mumbled, exclaimed, laughed, demanded

Happy – content, merry, cheerful, delighted, joyful

Small – tiny, petite, little, tiny, miniature, fine

Big – huge, enormous, gigantic, massive, large, tremendous, hefty

Nice – kind, sweet, delightful, pleasant, polite, lovely

Hot – boiling, sweltering, baking, roasting, balmy

Walk – strolled, strutted, staggered, swerved, darted, browsed, dived, stomped, sauntered, raced, hurried, rushed, dawdled

Hungry – famished, peckish, starved, starving, ravenous

Teaching and encouraging your students to use a thesaurus to improve upon their writing is an important step to using synonyms. Just having thesaurus’ in the classroom is not enough. Dictionaries are the same thing.

Students should also be encouraged to use their editing time to swap out synonyms to create a more interesting piece of writing. This should become a regular classroom practice before any work is submitted as completed.

Do you regularly use the word ‘synonyms’ with your students? Could they tell you what it means?

How do you encourage the use of new vocabulary choices in your students writing? We would love it if you joined the conversation and left a comment below.