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Topic: Y6

Relevant for Year 6 teachers and students.

Homonyms 2

Lesson

Activity 3

This lesson continues our look at homonyms. 

Take for example the word fast

How many different meanings and word classes can you think of?

Look at these two sentences: 

  1. Katie works very fast
  2. Katie is a fast worker.

They have very similar meanings, but in one sentence fast is an adverb and in the other an adjective.

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Hyponymy

Plan

Activity 1

Show the learners the list of three nouns. Ask them to discuss the questions in pairs or small groups. 

After a couple of minutes, reveal the focus of the lesson in the next slide: how nouns can relate to each other by being more general or specific. Use the example to demonstrate. Ask learners if they can think of any other examples. Don't worry if they struggle at this point, as they will see more throughout the lesson. 

Ask learners to make notes on the new terminology, beacuse they will need it for the other activities. 

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Hyponymy

Lesson

Activity 1

Look at these three nouns.

What is the relationship between them? Can they be arranged into a logical order? 

  • dog
  • poodle
  • animal

We can label nouns as general or specific. The specific noun is included in the general noun.

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Metaphor

Plan

Activity 1

Check your learners' prior knowledge by asking them to discuss the meaning of the term metaphor and to give examples. This can be done individually, and then check in small groups and/or whole class.

Use the next slide to confirm the learners' answers. Next, ask if the learners can think of any other animal metaphors such as sly fox. Ask learners to share their ideas with each other and the whole class.

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Metaphor

Lesson

Activity 1

What does the term metaphor mean?

Can you think of an example? 

A metaphor is when a word or phrase is used to suggest a resemblance to a another thing or action. 

A metaphor uses language in a figurative sense. 

When we call someone a sly fox we are implying that their behaviour is similar to a fox i.e. sneaky or crafty. 

What other animal metaphors can you think of? 

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Noun endings

Exploring suffixes and how they affect word class

In this activity we will look at suffixes which change verbs and adjectives into nouns. This process is a part of derivational morphology. 

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Noun identification

In this activity, students work through the criteria for identifying nouns.

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Noun identification: Activity 1

Which words do you think are nouns?

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Noun identification: Activity 2

I'll see you on Thursday.

Is Thursday a noun?

  • Does it represent a person, place, thing or idea?
  • Can it be singular or plural? Can you say one ___ and two ___s?
  • Can it be possessive? Can you add 's or ' at the end?
  • Can it follow the or a?
  • Can it be replaced with a pronoun like it, he, she, or they?

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Noun phrase generator

Try this noun phrase generator in class. Your students will enjoy creating weird and funny noun phrases using the interactive whiteboard.

Goals

  • Create some new noun phrases.
  • Examine what can and can't happen in noun phrases.
  • Evaluate example noun phrases, looking at why they do or don't work.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will be generating noun phrases. 

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Noun phrase generator: Activity

Use the interactive whiteboard to generate weird and wonderful noun phrases. 

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Nouns and only nouns

Students are asked to communicate using a bank of nouns - and nothing else.

Goals

  • Communicate with a partner using only nouns.
  • Discuss what can and can't be easily expressed using only nouns.
  • Determine which other types of words are useful for expressing complex ideas.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that this activity will involve you trying to express progressively more complicated concepts and actions to a partner using only these words, your own body language and imagination.

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Past participles in composition

This activity involves working with nonfinite clauses to do some sentence-splitting and sentence-joining. The purpose is to develop your awareness of the different kinds of structures that are available to you as a writer.

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Past participles in composition: Activity 1

His report, published yesterday, demands fundamental changes in the way safety is regulated in the North Sea. →

His report was published yesterday. It demands fundamental changes in the way safety is regulated in the North Sea.

Invented in the late sixties, the melotron used a complicated system of loop tape recordings to achieve an effect similar to sampling. →

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Past participles in composition: Activity 2

Beckett’s early work was written in English over the period from 1929 to 1938. It seems restless, nomadic. →

Written in English over the period from 1929 to 1938, Beckett’s early work seems restless, nomadic.

The electromagnetic bell was patented in 1878 by Thomas Watson. It is rugged, reliable and loud enough to be heard from some appreciable distance. →

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Playing with person

In this exercise, students make changes to pronouns in texts, and evaluate the effects of those changes.

Goals

  • Identify first, second, and third person pronouns, and practise switching from one to another.
  • Evaluate the effects of writing using different personal pronouns.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will make changes to existing texts by changing the personal pronouns in those texts.

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Playing with person: Activity

I’m sitting here looking out of the window. Nothing’s happening; it never does. I sit here every day for hours on end, just looking. Looking for what? I don’t know. They never told me what I should be looking for. And I’ve never found out.

I once thought I’d found something, but I couldn’t be sure. It might just have been a trick of the light. How was I to tell?

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Polysemy

Plan

Activity 1

Explain that the word polysemy refers to the idea that words can have more than one meaning.

Ask the learners to think of more than one meaning for the words football and mouse and discuss with a partner or small group. Show the next slide to reveal some possible answers.

As an extension, see if learners can come up with any other words with multiple meanings. 

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Polysemy

Lesson

Objective

To understand how polysemy applies to different word classes.

Activity 1

Some words may have only one meaning, but most tend to have more.

Let's take for example the words football and mouse.

How many meanings can you think of for each? 

football can mean:

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Prefixes in adjectives

In this lesson, students will look at some common prefixes that can be added to adjectives and see how they change meanings.

Goals

  • Identify some common prefixes in adjectives.
  • Describe the meanings contributed by common adjective prefixes.
  • Experiment with acceptable and unacceptable prefixes for particular adjectives.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will look at adjectives with distinctive prefixes.

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Preposing: Activity

Some things I can remember without writing them down. → I can remember some things without writing them down.

Hardbacks I wouldn’t lend to anyone. → I wouldn't lend hardbacks to anyone.

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Restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses

In this lesson, we look at the difference between two kinds of relative clause. A relative clause is a special kind of subordinate clause, and like other subordinate clauses it is introduced by a subordinating conjunction. More specifically, the introduction of a relative clause can be carried out by a relative pronoun.

The two types of relative clauses we will be looking at are:

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