Professor Lexicon's robot dropped the word library, and 3rd grade students sort the pile back into three families. The 15-word bank holds certainty words like knew, suspected, and wondered, affection words like adored and cherished, and anger words like furious and irritated. Two follow-up questions ask which word was hardest to place and for one new word per family. The 3 pages support L.3.5.c, and the answer key sorts all 15 words.
L.3.5.c
“Distinguish shades of meaning among related words that describe states of mind or degrees of certainty (e.g., knew, believed, suspected, heard, wondered).”
The Degrees of Certainty column, where students separate knew, believed, guessed, suspected, and wondered from the feeling words, and question 1, which asks why a word such as suspected was hard to place.
Fifteen words in a table, from knew and loved to annoyed, bothered, and prized.
Students write each word under Degrees of Certainty, Degrees of Affection, or Degrees of Anger.
Question 1 asks which word was hardest to sort and why. Question 2 asks for one new certainty word, affection word, and anger word.
Ranking follow-up
After the sort, have students rank each family from mildest to strongest, such as bothered, annoyed, furious, enraged. The sheet does not ask for this, and it is where the shades of meaning really show.
Sticky note sort
Write the 15 words on sticky notes and sort them as a class on chart paper first. Suspected often lands with the anger words until someone uses it in a sentence.
Word choice in drafts
Ask students to replace mad in a recent draft with one word from the anger column. The column gives five choices of different strength.
Get started today
