Homonym Teaching Ideas

Enjoy these activities to help teach the skill homophones, homonyms, and homographs to your students.

Boy, oh boy! How confusing the definitions of homophones, homonyms, and homographs can be for students. Then add heteronyms to the mix, and students' minds start to spin.

I teach this concept by starting with shapes. Students learn about 4-sided polygons including squares, rectangles, trapezoids, rhombus, parallelograms, and kites at an early age. Create a Venn diagram and show how a square is also a rectangle and a rhombus and that all three of these are parallelograms. Explain that homonyms work similarly. Having a visual illustration for the shapes helps students understand how, for example, all homophones are homonyms but not all homonyms are homophones.

Confusing Words
To, Too, and Two

I teach students three rules to determine which "to, too, two" to use. This anchor chart goes over the rules.

Rule #1 - Determine if the word is a number. Substitute a number such as 4 or 6 in place of the word "to, too, two." If the sentence makes sense, use the word two.

Rule #2
Part 1 - Substitute the word "also" in place of "to, too, two." If it makes sense, use the word too.
Part 2 - See if the sentence is talking about something extreme such as too much or too big. If so, use the word too. You can determine this by asking "To what extent?" If you can answer with "too loudly" or "too [add descriptive adjective or adverb here]," then the word to use is too.

Rule #3
All other times, use the word to. There are many meanings of the word to.

Confusing Words
They're, Their, and There

This anchor chart reminds students of the three rules I use to determine which "there, their, they're" to use. Students learn which "there, their, they're" should be used quickly if they follow these three simple rules when they come upon a situation where a decision must be made.

1) Try using they are. If they are makes sense in place of "there, their, they're," then they know they must use the contraction - they're.

For example:

They are best friends. They're best friends.

Yes, they are makes sense, so they are is needed.

If they are doesn't make sense in the sentence, then move on to the next rule.

2) If they are doesn't make sense, exchange "there, their, they're" for her or his to determine if someone owns something.

For example:

Their branch is high. Her branch is high.

Yes, this makes sense, so the word their is needed.

If her doesn't make sense in the sentence, then move on to the next rule.

3) If rules #1 and #2 don't work, then use there.

Additional Homonym Resources

Click on the links under the images to go to homonym resources.

Foldable Organizer

Homophones, Homonyms, and Homographs Organizer

TPT Resource

If you are looking for more practice with troublesome word pairs, try this:

This bundle contains:
2 Printable Books
4 PowerPoint Presentations
3 Interactive Webpages

Troublesome Words Bundled

These free games practice homophones or homographs using sentences from Sarah, Plain and Tall. To play the games, students roll a die and move around the gameboard. They read the homophone or homograph (depending on the game) they land on. Next, the player covers a sentence from the book in the center of the board that uses the word. My students love playing these games and really learned a lot.

Download the games here.