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Classroom activity Grade 3 English Language Arts

Two Meanings for One Word at the Cobbledon Water Yard

A grade 3 six-station game on multiple-meaning words such as main, plant, and spring, using paired sentences from a town water yard and from everyday life.

Objectives

  1. Students will decide which meaning of a word fits a given sentence.
  2. Students will name the words in a sentence that signal the correct meaning.
  3. Students will write two sentences that use one word in two ways.

Vocabulary

Spring
A spring is a place where groundwater flows out of the ground on its own. Springs form where the water table meets the land surface, often on hillsides or at the bottom of slopes.

Also: main, plant, tap, bank, drain

Teacher overview

Six stations around the room each hold one pair of sentences built on a single word, and every pair puts one sentence in the water yard of Cobbledon, a fictional town, and one sentence in ordinary life. Groups rotate through the stations with a recording sheet, decide what the word means in each sentence, and mark the nearby words that told them. Third graders often hold on to the first meaning they learned for a word, so a student who knows that a plant is a green growing thing will read "the water plant" as a mistake, and a student who knows a bank holds money will picture a building beside the creek. Station 2 and station 4 are the two most worth reading aloud together at the end.

Activity Directions

  1. Before class, copy the twelve sentences from the handout onto six station cards, keeping each pair together, and tape one card at each of six spots around the room. Number the cards 1 through 6 in the order the pairs appear.
  2. Print one recording sheet per student and give each group a clipboard.
  3. Open with one example on the board that is not on any card: "Sam will run to the store" and "The pump will run all night." Ask what the word run means in each, and underline the words that helped.
  4. Put students in six groups of three or four and send one group to each station. Set the timer for four minutes.
  5. At each station, the group reads both sentences aloud, talks about the two meanings, and each student writes their own answers for those two numbered items on the recording sheet.
  6. Call time and rotate every group one station clockwise. Repeat until every group has visited all six stations, which takes about twenty-four minutes.
  7. Send students back to their seats to finish item 13 on their own.
  8. Once every sheet has thirteen answers, debrief with two questions: "Which station fooled you first, and which word inside the sentence finally settled it?" and "Why can the same word mean two different things without anything being wrong?"
Two Meanings for One Word at the Cobbledon Water Yard — Grade 3 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Recording sheet. For each sentence, write what the word in bold means in that sentence.

  1. The crew dug up Cobbledon Road on Monday to fix a broken water main.
  2. Rosa was so hungry that she ate her main dish before her soup.
  3. Mr. Coppice drives to the water plant at the edge of town every morning.
  4. Nell set the little plant on the windowsill so it would get sun.
  5. Fill the jug at the tap over the sink, not from the hose outside.
  6. Ben felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around to see who it was.
  7. The truck parked on the bank of Cobbledon Creek, close to the water.
  8. Dad drove to the bank downtown to put his paycheck away.
  9. Cold water comes out of the ground at the spring behind the old barn.
  10. The spring inside the broken clock had come loose and would not push.
  11. Rain runs off the roof, crosses the walk, and goes down the drain by the door.
  12. That long hike will drain your water bottle before noon.
  13. Pick one word from this sheet. Write two sentences of your own, one for each meaning, and circle the words in each sentence that show which meaning you used.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: A large pipe under the street that carries water. The words dug up, road, and broken water point to a pipe rather than to something important.
  2. Answer: The biggest or most important part of the meal. The words hungry, dish, and soup put this sentence at a table.
  3. Answer: A building where water is cleaned. The words water, edge of town, and drives show a place a person goes to work.
  4. Answer: A small living thing that grows. The words windowsill and sun show something that grows.
  5. Answer: The faucet where water comes out. The words jug, over the sink, and hose show a place water comes from.
  6. Answer: A light touch. The words shoulder and turned around show a touch, not water.
  7. Answer: The sloping ground at the edge of a creek. The words creek and close to the water settle it.
  8. Answer: A place that keeps money. The words downtown and paycheck settle it.
  9. Answer: A place where water flows out of the ground on its own. The words cold water, out of the ground, and barn settle it.
  10. Answer: A coiled piece of metal that pushes. The words clock, come loose, and push settle it.
  11. Answer: An opening that carries water away. The words rain, roof, and runs off show water leaving.
  12. Answer: To empty something. The words hike, water bottle, and before noon show the bottle becoming empty.
  13. Answer: Answers will vary. Accept any pair of sentences that uses one of the six words in two clearly different ways, with at least one circled clue word in each sentence. A student who picks tap might write, "Turn the tap off while you brush," and "I gave the door a tap."

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a recording sheet on which the two meanings for each word are already printed in a small box beside the pair, so the task becomes matching rather than writing a definition. Send an adult or a strong reader with this group for the first two stations, and accept answers of two or three words.

Extension

Ask students to add a seventh station of their own by finding a water word in the classroom that has two meanings, such as scale, current, or pressure, and writing a matched pair of sentences for it on a blank card. Their card must include one water-yard sentence and one everyday sentence.

ELL supports

Post a small sketch beside each station card showing both meanings, such as a pipe and a plate for main, or a coil and a stream for spring. Read both sentences aloud at each station before groups talk. Provide the frame "Here main means ___ because the sentence says ___," and let students answer orally first, then write.

Extensions

Students can start a class chart called Words That Work Two Jobs and add to it for the rest of the unit whenever a water reading turns up another one. Ask them to write the water meaning on the left and the everyday meaning on the right, so the chart itself becomes a two-column organizer they built themselves.