Word Fields: Words for Go and Look

A bank of ten verbs sits at the top of this 3rd grade page: squint, creep, stroll, gaze, hurry, peek, glance, observe, walk and watch on the sheet shown. Below are two tall panels, each topped with a small fence and headed by a word in quotation marks, go on the left and look on the right, with six writing lines in each. The child writes each word in the field it belongs to. Four words belong to go and six to look, and both fields have the same number of lines, so the lines do not give the answer away.

A word field groups words that share a core meaning, and it is a way of seeing vocabulary as families of ideas rather than a list. Go and look are the two most useful fields at this age, because children use the plain words constantly and have many better ones available: creep, stroll and hurry are all going, but at very different speeds; peek, glance and gaze are all looking, for very different lengths of time. Observe is the word to talk about, since it is the one science will ask them to use.

One sheet, ten words, two fields. For a stretch, ask children to rank the look words from quickest to longest, which joins this page to the shades of meaning face. The synonyms for said face is the grade 2 version of the same idea with speaking words. This is the top of the synonyms family, and a good lead into story writing, where every walk can become something more exact.