This week's worksheet helps students sort out when the following prefixes are negative and when they take on other meanings: in-, im-, il-, and ir-. Click here for the worksheet, and here to read the related Wordshop article "Getting 'In' to Prefixes."

Use this week's worksheet to give young students an opportunity to explore antonyms in the Visual Thesaurus. Antonyms, pairs of words expressing opposite concepts, are connected by dashed red lines in Visual Thesaurus word maps. Using the VT, students will find antonyms for eleven adjectives and then unscramble some mysterious letters to solve a puzzle. Click here for the worksheet and here for a related lesson plan, "It's Opposite Day."  Continue reading...

November 23rd has been named Fibonacci Day since 11-23 doubles as the date's abbreviation and the first numbers in the Fibonacci Sequence (1, 1, 2, 3...). The Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci used this sequence in lots of wacky ways--from predicting the population growth of rabbits to exploring the "golden ratio" formed between two consecutive numbers in the sequence.  Continue reading...

Teachers, your students may know that they are getting a day off for Veterans Day, but they may not know why! Use this worksheet to lead your students through some Visual Thesaurus research to define the words veteran and armistice and to understand how Armistice Day became Veterans Day back in 1954. Click here for the worksheet.

The presidential debates begin this week, and this week’s worksheet gets students to evaluate the language and words that shape the focus for each presidential and vice presidential candidate.  Continue reading...

It's important for students to keep their ism's straight — especially in social studies. You wouldn't want to confuse capitalism with communism, or internationalism with colonialism. This week's worksheet guides students to learn each of these 25 social studies ism's by looking up their base words on the Visual Thesaurus and right-clicking their way to examples of these ism's in action.  Continue reading...