Grammar: Homographs and Homonyms
Grammar: Homographs and Homonyms
Aim
•Introduce homographs, which are words that share the same spelling, but have a different meaning.
•Homograp hs that look and sound the same are called homonyms.
Introduction
•Write some homophones on the board and discuss the spellings and meanings of each pair: air I heir, ate I eight, be/ bee, brake/ break , clause/ claws, days/ daze, ewe/ yew / you, for / four, groan / grown, knight / night, mail I male, muscle I mussel, pair Ipear, right I write, sea / see, waist/ waste, wood / would .
•If the children are having problems with certain homophones, add them to the board and discuss them with the class.
•Point out that the word homophone comes from the Greek words homos (meaning same) and phone (meaning sound or voice).
Main Point
•Explain that as well as homophones, there are also words called homographs.
•The children now know that homos means same and that graphos means writing. They learnt the word homograph on page 92 of the Pupil Book , so they may be able to say what homographs are: words that share the same spelling but have different meanings.
•Writ e fly on the board and discuss some of its different meanings, such as fly the insect (as in the spider caught a fly) and fly the verb (as in the birds fly high in the sky).
•Point out that these two words not only look the same, but they also sound the same.
•Homographs like this are called homonyms, from the Greek words homos and onoma, meaning name.
•Ask the children if they can think of any more examples of homonyms and write them on the board.
•Possible words include: jam (the food / to block), bank (the river’s edge/ where we keep money), lean (slim/ to tilt), date (the timeI the fruit), rock (a boulder I to sway), change (coins/ to alter) and bear (the animal/ to carry).
•Point out that many of these words not only have different meanings, they are also different parts of speech.
Activity Page
•The children draw a picture for each meaning of the word bat (the small animal with wings I a long wooden stick) and wave (moving water I to salute).
•They then read each pair of descriptions, think of a word that can mean both things and write it in the big leaf (bark, ball, navy, left , swallow, pupil , duck).
Extension Activity
•Write some homonyms on the board and ask the children to write two different meanings for each one on a separate sheet of paper.
•If they cannot think of more than one meaning, they can look up the word in the dictionary.
•Possible words include: lap (kneelcircuit), roll (bread / to spin), pen (writing tool / small animal enclosure), palm (hand / tree), light (lamp/ pale), fair (carnival / just), lie (untruth/ to recline), hide (animal skin / to conceal), book (novel/ to reserve), break (rest / to smash), nail (spike/ finger ), train (vehicle/ to teach), trunk (tree/ elephant).
Rounding Off
•Go over the activity page with the children, discussing their answers.
•If they have done the extension activity, ask a few children to read out a pair of meanings and see if the class can guess the word.
