English · Shades of Meaning
Synonym Spectrum
These all mean "walked". Drag them onto the rail, calmest on the left.
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
Synonyms are not spare copies of each other - each one carries a different temperature. A writer who chooses "stormed" instead of "walked" has told you about the character's mood without ever naming it, and an examiner will credit you for spotting that. When a question asks why the author chose a particular word, the answer is almost always: because of where it sits on a spectrum like this one.
Helping a child through Synonym Spectrum
Hints, least revealing first
- Start with the two extremes - which word could you never use about someone in a temper?
- Picture the feet. Dawdling feet drag; stomping feet land hard.
- Compare them in pairs: is "marched" calmer or angrier than "stomped"?
When they finish it: “That is the expert spectrum.”
4 11+ skills this exercise practises
Each of these has its own page, with a worked example on it. 1 of the 4 names the mistake that skill attracts.
- Interpret a word in contextInfer the meaning of one word from its sentence and passage context.
- Classify a word relationshipClassify one pair or group by its semantic relationship.
- Select a synonymSelect a word with the closest meaning in the stated context.
- Select closest meaningChoose the option closest in meaning to a target word.
You can reuse this. Here is exactly how far that goes
Tutors, teachers and editors keep asking, so this is the answer in writing rather than by email. You do not need to ask permission, and you do not need to tell us.
- Embed it
- Put the exercise inside your own page with the code above. It stays playable, and it keeps working when we improve the engine behind it.
- Print it
- Print the page, or print the exercise off the screen, and hand out the copies. No limit on how many.
- Use it in class
- One child or a full set, in a school, in a tutoring session, in a homework club, or at the kitchen table.
- Put it in something you charge for
- A paid course, a paid tutoring session, a paid workbook, a members-only site. You owe us no fee and you do not need to ask.
- Reuse it in your own writing
- Quote it, rewrite it, translate it, cut it up, or build something different on top of it. Treat the wording, the worked examples and the question ideas as yours to work with.
The one thing we ask is a link back to the page you took it from, so a reader can find the live, playable version and the rest of the 11+ skills next to it. That is a request, not a condition: nothing above depends on it.
This covers the interactive exercises and the teaching notes on these 11+ pages. It does not cover the Trace Learn name or logo, and it does not let you present your version as something Trace Learn published.
Embed this exercise
Paste this into your own page and the exercise runs there, playable, for your readers or your students. It is 900 pixels tall by default and as wide as the column you put it in; change the height if your layout wants a different one.
The embedded copy has no header, no footer and no sign-up prompt. It records nothing about the child using it, on your page just as on ours.
Synonym Spectrum touches 4 skills at once
Which means a child who struggles with it could be stuck on any one of them. A free diagnostic across all four subjects narrows it to the one.