A synonym roll where the student started by writing in their assigned word and added synonyms in a spiral.
Pinterest can be such a life saver and source of inspiration (plus a time-suck if you are not careful). I was looking for a different activity to use with 3rd grade students to practice thesaurus skills. Bingo! Found a cute idea on Pinterest that showed a bulletin board, “Synonym Rolls”. This pin used paper cut outs in the shape of cinnamon rolls, on which synonyms were written in a spiral.
The students had looked up words in a dictionary the previous week and I used the same list of words to look up in the thesaurus, hopefully there would be a benefit to repeating the same words.
I gave them a slip of paper with a word on it (reused these slips for all 4 classes) and we reviewed the skills needed to use a thesaurus: alphabetical order and guide words. They wrote their word in the center of the cinnamon roll and copied as many synonyms as were listed in their thesaurus. It’s hard to tell in the photo, but I ran off the rolls on tan copy paper.
I had a PowerPoint looping on our large screen television that consisted of a series of photos of cinnamon rolls to reinforce the play on words of cinnamon and synonyms. It sure made everyone hungry!
After completing their rolls, the students cut out them out and glued them onto a large sheet of paper to resemble a box of rolls.
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