Lesson 38: Teacher Answer Key & Guide
TEACHER KEY
Semantic Distinction
Mastering Advanced Homophones & Triplets: This lesson introduces subtle phonetic twins (cells/sells, seize/sees, buy/by) and the classic English triplet (scent/sent/cent). Emphasize that spelling is the written guardian of word meaning.
1. Bees put honey in cells.
Analysis: cells refers to hexagonal honeycomb compartments (from Latin cella, a small room).
2. The merchant sells his goods.
Analysis: sells is the third-person present verb meaning to vend or transfer for money.
3. The lion will seize his prey.
Analysis: seize means to take hold of forcibly and suddenly.
4. The child sees the bright star.
Analysis: sees is the present tense verb of optical perception.
5. We buy peaches by the peck.
Analysis: buy = purchase. by = unit of measurement preposition ("a peck" is an old dry measure of 8 quarts).
6. The scent of the flower is pleasant.
Analysis: scent = natural perfume or fragrance.
7. He was sent to the store with a cent.
Analysis: sent = dispatched (passive participle of send). cent = one-cent copper coin (penny).
• Exemplar 1 [seize / sees]: The hawk sees the field mouse and swoops down to seize it.
• Exemplar 2 [buy / by]: We sat by the riverbank and ate fresh cherries we did buy.
• Exemplar 3 [scent / sent / cent]: Mother sent me to buy sweet lavender whose scent cost only one cent.
| Evaluation Focus |
Exemplary (Proficient) |
Developing (Needs Support) |
| Homophone Accuracy |
All 9 completion blanks filled with the exact word matching grammatical and semantic context. |
Confuses 1 or more homophones (e.g. *"honey in sells"*, *"with a scent"*). |
| Copying Precision |
Accurately copies every sentence with clean baseline penmanship, correct capitals, and periods. |
Drops ending periods or omits letter combinations in copying. |
| Original Sentence Creation |
Composes two rich, complete sentences demonstrating contextual understanding of target homophones. |
Produces fragments or ungrammatical sentences. |