When you look up a word with loads of meanings on the Visual Thesaurus, you are greeted with lots of colorful meaning bubbles, lots of meaning branches, and lots of synonyms. This week's worksheet asks students to check out some of our more action-packed word maps to identify synonyms and definitions from different parts of speech.  Continue reading...

Unless students are nautically inclined, they might not be able to distinguish different geographical terms relating to bodies of water like strait or gulf. Here's a worksheet teachers can use to help them navigate the tricky sea of words.  Continue reading...

We are often reminded that much of the English language is derived from the language of ancient Greece. However, students might not realize that some of our English words actually double as the names of Greek letters. Here is a worksheet that asks students to explore a few Greek letters on the Visual Thesaurus and to discover their additional meanings. Download the worksheet here.

This week's worksheet gives students a chance to discover how Americans and Brits might give the same set of directions to Grandma's home using different sets of vocabulary words.  Continue reading...

This week's worksheet asks students to examine the meanings of some familiar words beginning with the prefix tele- and to infer the meaning of its ancient Greek origin.  Continue reading...

If a student encounters an unfamiliar word, he or she should examine the word's ending for a clue to its meaning. This week's worksheet helps students discover how words ending in certain suffixes (-ee, -er, and -or) may have something important in common.  Continue reading...

Words with similar definitions can have wildly different connotations. This week's worksheet ask students to analyze a group of related words and to figure out how they could be placed in a word spectrum — ranging from the word with the most negative connotation to the word with the most positive connotation.  Continue reading...