English · Expanding common abbreviations
Abbreviation Match
Join every short form to what it stands for. Each one links to exactly one full form.
Free to use and free to share. There is no sign-up, no score, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. What you may do with it, in full.
Loading the interactive exercise. Nothing you do here is saved or scored.
Why this works
An abbreviation is a full word or phrase with most of it left out, and the short form is only useful because everybody agrees what it stands for. "Capt" is short for Captain, the officer in charge of a ship or a team; "m" is short for metre, the standard unit for measuring length; "mm" is short for millimetre, a thousandth of a metre; "Mr" is short for Mister, the title written before the surname of a man. The opening letter usually matches, which makes short forms easy to guess and easy to guess WRONG: several of these full forms begin with the same letter as each other, so the letter narrows things down and the meaning has to finish the job.
Helping a child through Abbreviation Match
Hints, least revealing first
- Start with the ones you are sure of. Every link you make takes a full form off the board and makes the rest easier.
- The first letter is a clue and not an answer: several full forms here start with the same letter, so it narrows the choice without making it.
- Say each short form out loud as if you were reading it in a sentence: "we cycled twelve Capt" tells you more than the letters do.
When they finish it: “Every short form matched to what it really stands for!”
11+ skill this exercise practises
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All english 11+ skillsYou can reuse this. Here is exactly how far that goes
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Abbreviation Match practises one skill. English has 41 of them
A free diagnostic covers every english skill and the other three subjects, and comes back with a shortlist rather than a list.