4th Grade · Vocabulary · L.4.5.C, L.4.5

Analogies Lesson Plan for 4th Grade

A ready-to-teach analogies lesson for 4th Grade, built around synonym and antonym analogies, part to whole analogies, object and use analogies, and completing mixed analogies. Print the plan, print the practice pages, and you are set.

Approximately 47 minutes

Learning objective

Complete synonym and antonym analogies
Complete part to whole and object and use analogies
Find the link in a word pair and apply it

Materials

Synonym and Antonym Analogies
Part to Whole Analogies
Object and Use Analogies
Complete the Analogy
Pencils, and whiteboard space for the modeled examples

Lesson steps

1. Build the background (5 min)
Introduce analogies in plain language and connect it to a book the class already knows. Write the key term where students can see it all lesson. For 4th Grade, one clear sentence beats a full definition.
2. Read aloud and think aloud (I do) (10 min)
Read a short passage aloud. Stop twice and narrate your own thinking about analogies: what you noticed in the text and what made you notice it. Students are learning the move, not the answer.
3. Guided practice (we do) (12 min)
Read a second passage together. This time students find the evidence and you record it. Push every answer back to the text with "what words told you that?"
4. Independent practice (you do) (15 min)
Hand out "Synonym and Antonym Analogies". Students read and answer on their own. Circulate and ask individuals to point to the line in the text that supports their answer.
5. Share and close (5 min)
Two or three students share an answer and the evidence behind it. Restate analogies one final time in the students' own words, not yours.

Check for understanding

Collect the practice pages and sort them into three piles: fluent, developing, and not yet. Any student in the third pile needs analogies retaught in a small group before the class moves on.

Differentiation

Extra support. Students who stall: pull them into a small group and rebuild analogies with concrete materials or a simpler text before asking for the written work again. Do not send the page home as homework, it will just rehearse the misunderstanding.

Extension. Students who finish early: ask them to write their own analogies problem for a partner to solve, then check the partner's work. Creating a problem is harder than solving one and it surfaces whether they really understand analogies.

Skills covered in this lesson

Analogies practice

Questions teachers ask about teaching analogies

What is an analogy?

An analogy shows that two pairs of words are related in the same way. Hot is to cold as up is to down works because both pairs are opposites. The skill is finding the link in the first pair and applying it to the second.

How do you teach analogies to 4th graders?

Have your child say the link as a sentence: a page is part of a book, so a petal is part of a flower. Saying it out loud turns a puzzle into a pattern. These sheets start with one kind of link per page before mixing them.

Are analogies part of the 4th grade standards?

CCSS L.4.5.C asks students to relate words to their synonyms and antonyms, which is exactly what synonym and antonym analogies practice. Part to whole and object and use analogies build the same reasoning and appear on many reading tests.

Is there an answer key for each worksheet?

Yes. All four analogies sheets have an answer key.