Antonyms with un-, dis- and in-: Build the Opposite Word

This 2nd grade antonyms page, the last page in the opposites family, opens with three prefix chips in a row — un-, dis-, in- — and then lists eight numbered base words down the left: kind, lucky, obey, happy, visible, safe, tidy, fair. Beside each word is an arrow and a handwriting rule. The child picks the prefix that turns the word into its opposite and writes the whole new word on the rule: unkind, unlucky, disobey, unhappy, invisible, unsafe, untidy, unfair. The prefixes are not assigned per row, so the child has to try each one in the head and hear which makes a real word. Most take un-; obey wants dis- and visible wants in-.

The opposites of 1st grade were separate words — hot and cold, big and small. This page shows the other way English makes an antonym: by putting a negative prefix on the front of a word the child already knows. That is the morphology 2nd graders are asked to use when they meet an unfamiliar word, and it works best when the child hears that the prefix means not: unkind is not kind, invisible is not visible. The teacher watches for two errors — a child who writes the prefix alone on the line instead of the whole word, and a child who attaches un- to every word because it fits most of them; disobey and invisible are the rows that reveal the second.

It prints as one clean sheet with a name line and can be corrected against the prefix chips at the top. The page belongs after the 1st grade opposites family — the base cards, the sentence page and the opposite-or-the-same page — because it assumes the child already knows what an antonym is and now needs the spelling rule. Pair it with a spelling-rules page on prefixes if the class is collecting word parts.