Expand Your Vocabulary With Our Synonyms Game

Get ready to expand your students’ vocabularies exponentially with a fun game of Synonym Dominoes! We’ve created this synonym game to help your students develop their skills using varied vocabulary in speaking and writing.

How To Play Synonym Dominoes

Students will take turns matching each side of the dominoes to pair up similar words. 

For example, if a player were to lay down the “join | mistake” domino, the next player would lay down the “connect” domino on the left, or the “error” on the left, and say the synonyms as they lay their piece down. Gameplay continues in this manner until all of the dominoes are gone. 

Scaffolding + Extension Tips 

Support students who need help understanding the concepts by providing visuals like an anchor chart or posters with common words and their synonyms. 

Challenge fast finishers who understand the concepts to write the synonyms on a piece of paper and think of as many other words as they can. 

Get our 10 Best Scaffolding Strategies here! 

Plus 3 More Ways to Use This Synonyms Game 

We created this resource for your reading station as an independent practice activity. We also suggest using it to reinforce your small group and full-class lessons in the following ways: 

🧠 Synonyms Brain Buster

As a small group or full class, say each word out loud, one at a time, and talk about the definition. Then, give the students 30 seconds (you keep time) to think of as many synonyms for that word as they can. When the time is up, you can call on students to give you some examples of words they came up with, and even let them compare their answers to see if there are any matching words amongst classmates.

👯‍♀️ Odd Man Out

Place three cards at each station, making sure two cards are synonyms and the 3rd card doesn’t belong. Student pairs will rotate through each station and identify the matching words, writing their answers on a separate sheet of paper.  

🃏 Upcycle Into Playing Cards

When students no longer want to play dominoes, turn this game into a deck of cards! Break out your scissors and cut the dominoes in half. Students can play games like Match It, Go Fish, or Snap, to name a few. 

Before You Download

Use the dropdown icon on the Download button to choose between the PDF or Google Slides version of this resource. An answer key is also included with this download.

This resource was created by Lindsey Phillips, a Teach Starter Collaborator.