Flip Out For Antonyms

Step one: Activate Background Knowledge -
Have students participate in a think-pair-share. Pose the question to them, what is an antonym?
Read the book, "Stop and Go, Yes and No, What is an Antonym?" by Brian P. Cleary.
After reading the book have students pair with their partners again and tell each other what an antonym is.

Step Two: Read "The Foot Book" by Dr. Seuss.

Step Three: Pass the Pen
Break the students into groups. Have the students put their heads together and brainstorm a list of opposites. Give each group a piece of white butcher paper and one marker. Time the students for 5 minutes. Have the first student write a pair of antonyms and then pass the paper and pen to the next person in the group. The second person will also write a pair of antonyms and so on until the timer goes off. Next have each student write their favorite antonym on a sticky note and place it on the antonym chart. Now have the kids trace their own feet on a piece of paper. Have each student cut out their feet and write their favorite antonym with a picture representation. One opposite on each foot. Finally have the students glue their antonym feet on a giant paper foot, so you can use this for your anchor chart.

Step Four: Look at the wordless picture book, "Exactly the Opposite" by Tana Hoban.
Draw students attention to the pictures in the book and let students guess what antonym they think the picture is representing. Also have them share their reasoning on why they think it is a certain antonym. Some pictures can be multiple antonyms.

Step Five: Antonym Class Book -
Explain to the students that they are going to take digital pictures with a camera to represent antonyms. Model for the students how to work the digital cameras. Remind students of the photos they saw in the book "Exactly the Opposite." Break students into groups of three and give each group a digital camera. Students will now move around the classroom and play area to find examples of antonyms. A little side note... groups of two don't work very well, because students need to have two students to act out the antonym and one student to take the picture.

Step Six: Load pictures onto your laptop computer and print the pictures. Have each group glue their photo on a white piece of paper and write the antonyms above the picture. Next have each group of students share their antonyms with the class. The class can guess what antonym they think the group was trying to represent. I have them share them on the document camera.

Step Seven: Take all the pages of the book and bind it together and put the book in your classroom library.