Overview

Introduction

Open the Shades of Meaning notebook and show the WALT and WILF to the class (‘We Are Learning To’ and ‘What I’m Looking For’) and share the expectations with the pupils for this lesson. 

Explain to the class that during this lesson they will be looking at shades of meaning and applying this to verbs.

Context

For this lesson all pupils are in the classroom and the teacher is using an interactive whiteboard.

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Lesson Plan 

Preparatory work

To do this lesson you need to download the:

• Shades of Meaning self extracting notebook file, (see here if you need advice on the self extraction).
• Sets of word cards - these will need to be copied, cut up and arranged into sets  prior to the lesson
• Finishing Sentences  - Differentiated sentence level work
• Tsunami Report This report is for pupils to highlight the verbs. The  second page shows all the verbs in the report should you wish to use this  for differentiation of the activity

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Lesson

Main Teaching Session – Sentence Level

Show page 3 of the notebook to the class. Ask the pupils if they can pick out a word that they can see on the page that means that someone is ‘really’ worried. Is there a word there that is more ‘intense’ than the others?

After the pupils have selected the word, drag the word to the darkest blue card at the top of the page. This symbolises that it is the strongest verb amongst the collection.

Now ask the pupils for the word that means someone is only mildly worried. Once the class have identified this word, drag the word to the lightest card at the bottom of the page to symbolise they have identified the weakest verb.

Ask the class to use their individual whiteboards to identify the next four words starting from the weakest to the strongest.

Discuss with the class how they know which order to put the words in. What do they experience when they say or think of these words. Encourage the pupils to internalise the words and link them to experiences they have had to help them categorise the strength of the shade.

Show page 4 to the class, which contains a selection of verbs, linked to the word ‘hold’. Again ask the pupils to put the words into strength order and drag the words to the relevant shade of card.

On the tables, the pupils should find two sets of cards. Ask the pupils to do the same activity with these cards putting the strongest at the top of their list and the weakest at the bottom. The pupils should have two completed lists. To extend pupils further, they could be asked to insert three other words into each list that they can think of.

Ask some pupils to show on the Interactive Whiteboard the shades of verbs they had in their sets and how they had sorted them. Ask the pupils to give brief explanation of their choices.

Display page 5 of the notebook, which contains three sentences. Ask pupils to select a word they have just shaded in terms of strength to fit in these sentences. Ask the pupils what clues they have in the text that might help them with their choice.

Ask the pupils in their groups to write three sentences to express the shades of three of the words in each list.

For those pupils who would require support during this session, the resource ‘Finishing Sentences’ is available for the pupils to insert the most appropriate word into the sentence.

Individual/Group Activity

 Distribute the Tsunami report to the pupils. Ask them to identify associated verbs with those highlighted in the report and experiment with the different shades to see the impact this creates on the meaning of the report. 

Ask the pupils to make notes on the verbs that they changed, whether they chose a weaker or stronger verb replacement and the impact this change had on the meaning of the report.

Plenary 

Ask the groups of pupils to feedback to the rest of the class with the way they had modified the report and the impact it had.

Allow the pupils to establish that it is important to ensure the most appropriate verb is used to convey the precise meaning. To take this work further, pupils could write a newspaper/eyewitness style report on a selected topic applying the skills discussed in this lesson.

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