Word Work

If I had to go back to college again, which I wouldn’t mind doing, one area I would love to take classes in would be linguistics. I love words and studying words and their origins – it just makes my geeky self pretty happy. Luckily, I can indulge this geeky interest in the classroom through word work.  I know in the Common Core (for fourth grade, it’s standard 4.3.0.3 – and yes, I had to look it up) students are expected to use morphology, including roots and affixes, to help with determining word meanings.  But how best to do this?

Over the years, I’ve developed what I call word work.  I don’t think it is anything original, and there are certainly many activities you can do that would be considered word work, but here is what mine looks like.

Each week I introduce two prefixes or suffixes. I start with some pretty basic ones early in the year, and then move into some that may be a bit less common, or would be considered more of a word part (like auto-) rather than a prefix. The first day, I have the students get out their dictionaries and look up the prefix or suffix. This is about the only dictionary work I do during the week, but at least they are getting a little practice. I have them write the definition down in their word work section of their writing notebook. I also hand out a take-home work sheet asking them to find one word for each of the affixes that we’re doing that week, write a sentence with that word showing what it means, and then I leave a small space for a sketch of the word. They have a week to get this done.

The following days I spend about five minutes going over two examples of each word part being used in a word. For example, this week we’re going over pre- and tri-, and I will do preview and predict, triangle and tricycle on the first day of words. I have the kids write the words in their notebooks underneath the definition of the word parts. Then I draw a sketch of the word, and encourage the kids to do the same. Over the years, I’ve developed a cartoony cast of characters that I use to illustrate the words, and that seems to help draw the students in as they wait to find out what is going to happen with Fred and Susie. (It also entertains me, which is a plus!)

By the end of a five-day cycle, students will have eight words each (sixteen total) that are examples of these prefixes and suffixes. For students who don’t have a dictionary or help at home, they have a bunch of words they can choose from in their notebooks.

It takes a while, but what I’ve observed is after a few weeks of doing this, students start to notice when a word has a prefix or a suffix that we’ve studied. I give them “Quist points” for noticing (the points don’t really go towards anything, but I tell them to keep track of them and they’ll get something great at the end of the year, which luckily nobody seems to remember). Many researchers will tell you that one way to increase your vocabulary is to learn Greek and Latin roots, and as we learn more throughout the year, I will have kids predict what they think a word means, based on what we’ve learned in the past.  I’ve even experienced this myself when I’ve come across words I didn’t know, but they had an affix whose meaning I remembered. It’s possible to be remarkably accurate in predicting meaning with that information. And finally, when kids are asked about Greek or Latin roots on the MAP test, I’ve found they now know what the question is asking them about. 

I’d be happy to share my worksheet and word lists with anyone who is interested in trying this in his or her classroom. The best part is it really doesn’t take that much time, and you get a big payoff with word recognition. Happy word work!