Word Degrees

Activity: Degrees

Purpose: To give students a chance to “play” with vocabulary words by thinking about their relationship to each other.

Preparation Time: 15 minutes

Materials Needed: small cards for vocabulary words 

Preparation:

Generate sets of words that can be used for comparison. For example, words describing size or emotions. Six to ten words per set seems to be most useful and manageable. 

Example: 

Happy
Anguished
Glad
Angry
Furious
Gleeful
Sad
Fabulous
Miserable
Magnificent

Write each word on a small index card or sticky note so they can be easily manipulated.

Procedure:

Present the words to the students. Make sure they already know what the words mean. If they do not, remove the word from the set.

Have the students order the words. With emotions, for example, you could have them order them from most negative to most positive.

Anguished - Furious - Miserable - Angry -Sad - Glad - Happy - Gleeful - Fabulous - Magnificent

If they need help, you can always model for them and do a couple examples together. 

(When first doing the activity, it helps to practice with something very concrete like “animals.” Have students put the words in some order… smallest to largest or cutest to ugliest. Once they understand the concept, you can move onto more abstract words.)

Note that they aren’t exact right answers. Ask students why they put words  in the order they did. This is especially good when there is disagreement between students. Talking about the degrees of difference between words is what helps understanding