How to get them to remember!?

[Manana]

DS (Y4) seems unable to remember what any of the parts of speech mean at the moment and it's infuriating! When we're doing the Bond English books, there are questions such as 'write 5 synonyms for the word 'nice'' which are obviously 5 very easy marks, but he'll automatically ask 'what's a synonym again?!' Is he doing this because I'm just there and maybe if I wasn't there he'd have to figure it out!?

So many words crop up in these papers-synonym, homonym, homophone, antonym, metaphor, simile, verb, adverb, noun (abstract, compound, common and proper!), adjective, onomtopeia, personification, preposition etc etc and it's proving hard! They are turning into rather abstract ideas, I think.


Has anyone got any tips to firmly cement the meanings of these words-or do I just continue with my 'drip drip drip' approach!?

[Belinda]

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[Manana]

Bit like learning times tables...

I'd make up some cards with the meanings and play a game or two of 'pairs' everyday this summer. Reckon he might know them come September.

Brilliant, thank you! Why didn't I think of that

[Belinda]

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[um]

Definitely agree with Belinda - with these terms, cards are the way to go!

You may wish to use a stopwatch (all mobiles have them) to time how long it takes to get a pack of the shuffled cards into the correct pairs. I have them in three columns rather than pairs, e.g

Adjective / Describes a noun / Yellow, wonderful, pretty, cold

Pronoun / Used in place of a noun / He, she, it, we, they

So that when arranged on the table, the word, its meaning, and examples of that word are placed next to each other.

PS, Sorry if this is hard to follow, when I post this message, my neat columns get mashed together!