Homophones can be very tricky and confusing even for students in upper grades. How do you teach homophones in a fun way? Find 7 fun and creative ways to teach homophones and help your students correctly use these tricky and confusing words.
Homophones are words that sound alike but have different meanings and different spellings. Using fun and engaging activities to practice these confusing words can help your students master homophones.
Ways to Teach Homophones
1 Use Strong Visuals to Teach Homophones
First, it is important to teach students the meaning of homophones and their spellings. Even 4th graders need reminders and review lessons for the most commonly used homophones.
Homophones such as their, there, and they’re; to, two, too; your, you’re; and its, it’s are frequently misspelled by 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. So, teaching, reviewing, and providing visuals for these frequently misspelled words is essential for student success. A visually engaging lesson can be a great way to help students with these confusing words.
Using anchor charts or visuals such as PowerPoints will help engage your students and help them to remember these confusing words. A PowerPoint lesson is a great way to introduce and review homophones and keep students’ attention.
2 Simple Tricks
Simple tricks to determine if there, their, and they’re are correct can be a simple way to help students remember these tricky words.
- If you wrote there in a sentence, will it make sense to replace it with here?
- If you wrote their in a sentence, will it make sense to replace it with our?
- If you wrote they’re in a sentence, will it make sense to replace it with they are?
3 Homophones Task Cards
Task cards are such a fun and simple way to review and practice homophones. Task cards can be used in a variety of ways: in centers, for morning work, partner work, and games! Task cards are perfect to pair with a board game, or play my favorite, Scoot! Find out more about Scoot Here.
4 Play Go Fish
Create your own set of go fish cards by writing pairs of homophones on index cards (one word per card). You will need about 26 pairs of homophones to create a deck of “cards.” Teach your students to play if they do not know how and let your students have fun with these tricky words! Students will ask, “Do you have the homophone ___?”
As an added step, you may require students use each word correctly in a sentence once they acquire a pair of homophones. If the student does not use the words correctly, they must return the cards to the “pool”.
5 First One Wins
Play a fun game with homophones. Divide your class into 2 or 3 teams. Have one player from each team come to the whiteboard at the front of the room. Once students are ready with a marker in hand. Give a homophone such as their. Then use the homophone in a sentence, “Their house is red brick.” The first student to write the homophone correctly gets a point for the team. Have new players for each team come to the board and repeat the process until every person has had a turn. The team with the most points wins.
6 Fly Swat
To play this exciting game you simply need two fly flaps. Before the game, write 10-15 pairs of homophones on the board. For this game, it is fun to scatter the words and tilt the words in different directions (don’t simply write them in a row or in a line).
To Play:
- Divide the class into two teams and have one person from each team come to the board with a fly swat.
- Next, call out a homophone and read a sentence that contains that homophone.
- The first student to “swat” the correct answer on the board gets a point for his/her team.
- Two more students come to the board and the game continues. Continue calling out homophones and using them in sentences until everyone has a turn.
- The team with the most points wins.
7 Teaching Homophones Bundle
Are you looking for easy and simple ways to teach homophones in your classroom? Find 6 fun and simple-to-use ideas in this homophones bundle. It contains so many fun and engaging activities to help your students learn and review tricky words! Find everything you need for your homophones lesson plan.
What’s Included
Inside this huge bundle you will find:
- 1 Homophones PowerPoint lesson-This PowerPoint can be used over multiple days to teach and/or review homophones with your students. Examples of schedule/lesson plan is included.
- 2 Homophones No Prep Packet- This packet of 18 fun worksheets will help your students practice commonly confusing words. Coloring pages, a crossword puzzle, riddles, and more make these worksheets fun and engaging for your students.
- 3 Homophones Task Cards- set of 28
- 4 Homophones Show Me the Card Activity
- 5 Homophones Digital Activity (Google Forms self-checking)
- 6 Homophones Printable and Digital Tests
