In second grade, students work with multiple meaning words, or homonyms. These words are spelled the same but have different meanings. In the curriculum at my school, they included a lot of test questions on multiple meaning words, but they didn’t have very good learning activities to actually teach these words to students. So I made worksheets for multiple meaning words so that my students could use these words and understand these words while reading.

So today I thought I would share how I use these worksheets for multiple meaning words plus the other fun activities I have my students to do to learn common homonyms.

 

Worksheets for Multiple Meaning Words

 

These worksheets have students write the meaning of the word, draw a picture to show the meaning, and write a sentence for the word. It is split into two parts so that students can do this for each meaning of the word.

When I first start teaching multiple meaning words, we fill out these worksheets as a class. I have students raise their hand and tell me one meaning of the word. We write it down. I project the worksheet and write it up on the board as well. Then I have students tell me a sentence with that meaning of the word. Then we draw a picture to go with it.  We then do the same thing for the other meaning of the word. Find the worksheets I use here.

Let me give you an example of this with the word light. I’ll tell students that “light” is a multiple meaning word. I have students raise their hand and tell me one meaning. A student might say, “light like the sun.” And I’ll tell them, “Yes, that kind of light is not dark. Let’s write “not dark” on our notes.” Then I ask students who has a sentence using that kind of light. One student might say, “I turn on the light so I can see.” We write that together. Then we draw a picture. I might draw a lightbulb in the picture spot on the page and have students copy me. Then I ask students what’s another meaning of the word light. A student might say something like, “something like a feather can be light.” And I’ll say, “Yes! That kind of light means not heavy. Let’s write down that definition of the word.” Then I ask for a sentence with that kind of light. Maybe a student would say, “The feather is light.” We write that sentence and then draw a feather on the page.

I like to put these worksheets into a packet for students. That way I only have to prepare them once. We usually focus on multiple meaning words for a whole week during our vocabulary lessons for that week.

I also have quiz pages I put in the packet. After 4 writing pages, we do a quiz page over those words. They are multiple choice questions where students need to find the meaning of the word that is being used in the sentence. Find the worksheets and quizzes here.

These worksheets and quizzes aren’t the only thing I do to help teach multiple meaning words to my students. I also do other activities for multiple meaning words.

 

Activities For Multiple Meaning Words

As students are finishing up their worksheet, I like to hand out multiple meaning word cards to students that are finished. They draw a picture that represents one meaning of the word. Then I hang this up as a wall display. Then when we come across those words in our readings, we can stop and talk about what meaning they are using. It helps integrate this concept throughout our day.

Once I teach a good amount of common multiple meaning words to my students, I have them do fun puzzles with them. Students have to match the word with their two meanings. I laminate a few sets and have students work with partners to match the pieces together. 

Find these activities here.

 

You can also tie in multiple meaning words with fun bulletin board or classroom door displays when there is word play involved.

Check out how I do that in December in this blog post: 3 Ways to Use These Classroom Door Decorations for Christmas

Check out how I do that in February in this blog post: Valentine Classroom Door Decorations that Students and Teachers Love