Literacy, Morphology, Orthography, Spelling, Structured Word Inquiry, Vocabulary

Vocabulary & Morphology using SWI book!!

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I REALLY DIDN’T POST ABOUT OUR BOOK??

As January begins, I always start to clean up my office, website, files, phone contacts, and yes, even my closets. This effort begins in earnest and ends in, “It doesn’t really have to be organized, does it?” I get an A for the idea, a B- for effort, and a C for follow-through.  I am also itching to get started on writing another book.

As I sat down at my computer this morning weeding through old posts, I suddenly realized that I never even made a post about one of the most important things I did this past year! I self-published my very first book!!  In one month, it will be a year since it was live on Amazon’s site — I can’t believe this is the first I’m writing about it. 

It has been quite the year though, both personally and professionally:  Adult kids moving in and out of the house, us moving them to and from different cities & states; bringing in new pets to the house; retiring from my public school job after 31+ years; being interviewed on 2 podcast episodes, continuing to present at conferences and on asynchronous platforms; traveling for work and fun; refocusing on my health; solving problems, creating classes, fun family weekends, and catching up with friends. With all that life sends our way, it’s a wonder anything gets done. 

Book cover, Vocabulary & Morphology using Structured Word Inquiry
Vocabulary & Morphology using Structured Word Inquiry by Lisa Barnett and Katie Squires, Published Feb 2025

 

Well — here it is, a post about our book, Vocabulary & Morphology using Structured Word Inquiry! My co-author Katie Squires and I spent a couple of years mulling over the concept of the book. Eventually, we decided to meet weekly to get the ball rolling. After many different drafts, I finally “saw” the way I wanted it to look and sent it to Katie. She and I have a great working relationship, we agree on so much and when we don’t, we discuss our reasoning and easily come to a conclusion. For Katie, this way of working with words was still somewhat new and it was fulfilling to help her learn about English orthography and grow her understanding through the writing of the book. Toward the end of writing the lessons, I was learning from her just as much!

It was a true scholarly process and one of the reasons I love SWI so much.

It makes no one the master; all become teachers and sharers of their knowledge while remaining open to learning from others. 

Our book was designed to work with any grade level, really, one needs to adjust parts to fit the youngest or oldest of students. Because our vocabulary words are mostly likely to be within grade 4 curriculum but may be on the periphery in earlier grades, it is likely best for grades 2 on up, depending on the vocabulary word. The activities and amount of information should be adjusted to suit the level of your student(s). We chose grade 4 words simply because we had a willing teacher to help us pilot a draft of some of the lessons to see how our ideas for each lesson translated to reality of working with a class of students. After her feedback and the students’ reactions, it spurred us on to complete the book over the following 8 months.  

THE PILOT: This fourth-grade teacher wanted to try out some SWI lessons with her students near the end of a school year. With all Science curriculum requirements met for the year, she had a window of about 20 minutes a day that she could try something new with previously introduced words from Science lessons throughout the year. She gave me a list of words from their Science curriculum and from that list, I chose words that either went together well, or had etymology that I knew a novice teacher could grasp (novice with etymology, this teacher was experienced as an educator), or words that would help them develop a better understanding of the definition. In addition, the words would help students understand something more about our spelling system. 

The teacher gave her students a pre-test and post-test for the spelling of each word and asked them to write down related words. On the spelling test, the results from pre- to post- test showed a gain of 38% more students being able to score a minimum of 80% on the spelling test (pretest: 19% scored 80 -100%; post-test: 57% of students scored 80-100%).  This is interesting because the teacher had chosen words she had previously instructed throughout the school year so the 19% accuracy on the pre-test acts like the baseline score. 

An image of a graph showing that 19% of students scored at least 80% on the pre-test and 57% of students scored at least 80% on the post-test.
This graph shows an increase of 38% of students who were able to score 80-100% on the post test as compared to the pre-test.

The number of students who could spell the list of words with 80% or better, tripled!

On the Related Words pre-test, only 10% of the students’ 114 responses were actually morphologically or etymologically related to the base element. Many students wrote synonyms which are by definition different than the original word. Synonyms are other words that have nuanced meanings similar to the original word. We were searching for words morphologically or etymologically related to the base element (have a spelling and meaning/historical connection).  Here is an example:  with the word ‘eruption‘, many students had written synonyms like ‘volcano‘ or ‘blow up‘ when we were looking for words like: ‘erupts‘, ‘erupted‘). On the post-test however, nearly 50% of the students’ 125 responses were related to the base; many even wrote more distant relatives such as: ‘disrupting‘, ‘corruption, and ‘ruptured‘.  In addition, we saw students attempt more words on the post-test, have far fewer guesses and there were greatly reduced blank answers which may indicate heightened engagement on the test and increased thinking by the students. 

An image of a graph that shows on the pre-test 8% of student responses being morphologically related to the vocabulary words while on the post test, nearly 50% of the responses students gave were related.
An image of a graph that shows on the pre-test 8% of student responses being morphologically related to the vocabulary words while on the post test, nearly 50% of the responses students gave were related.

This represents growth of just over 500%.  

The teacher reported that students were excited by the lessons and even though they did not complete each section of every workbook page, she noted the lessons were an important addition to the curriculum. She said they were filled with knowledge and critical thinking and the students’ engagement increased greatly over the few weeks of lessons.

Once we heard and saw all those results, we got right into working on the next half of the vocabulary word lessons. After completing those,  we knew we had to beef up the knowledge a teacher would need in order to begin this work with students, so we created the Exordium section of the book. This section helps the instructor learn how to analyze the etymology, understand three of the most common suffixing conventions that will effect the spelling of words, learn how to look up and understand how Latin verbs came into English spelling, and many other interesting pieces of information. Exordiums are often found at the beginning of informational books. It is essential information to know before working with the lessons. We were afraid of placing this at the end of the book in an Appendix because people often skip reading the Appendix or are so confused by the information, they don’t want to check an Appendix for more information that is generally an addition to not as much an explanation of material. Therefore, we placed this important information upfront, before the lessons. 

Analyzing the spelling of <exordium> and reading the Latin denotations of each morpheme can be very enlightening to our understanding:  

exordium –> ex + ord + i + um                                                                                       .        “out”  “begin” 

Feedback:  We have received wonderful feedback on this book so far! We love reading emails and Amazon reviews! We are absolutely  thrilled that a professor at Baylor University took this book on as a summer project with her graduate students who help build literacy skills with students in 1st through 10th grade who have Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). She reported that this book made English orthography accessible for her, her graduate students and the children they worked with!

She notes that, “the children… were genuinely excited to investigate words, uncover patterns, and make sense of vocabulary that maybe once fell out of reach.” 

An image of a very favorable review of the book Vocabulary & Morphology using SWI

I was reading through a social media post the other day on one of the many Science of Reading pages and saw a comment from someone I do not know expressing how valuable the book is — those moments take my breath away. I’m filled with joy, pride, and happiness that this book was worth all the work.   Even more important:

It is actually helping teachers help more students than I dreamed it would! 

This year, I also created a LinkTree with loads of wonderful resources (including ours) to help you learn about SWI. There are links to free and paid resources such as: videos, weekly Zoom drop-in sessions, classes, books, subscription services for a library of visual posters and images you can use with your students and another to look up books with mini-lessons (amazing), a podcast, swag/merch supporting SWI, and so much more!  While I have a shop on this site, there is no obligation to purchase from it, you can search the same book title on your own once you have it. If you choose to purchase from the shop, I make less than a dollar but I’m sure LinkTree gets a bit, too. Either way, this LinkTree was created to be of service and value to anyone interested in morphophonemic instruction or SWI. 

Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/empowerlc 

or use this QR code: 

QR code to the Link Tree with resources for and about SWI

Please consider leaving a review on Amazon as that helps other teachers and parents see the book in their suggested content which ultimately helps more students close the literacy gap.  Feel free to leave a comment here on this blog if you’d like. I read every one of them and will share any related to the book with Katie.  We are writing a second book and would love to know what you’d like to see most in regards to helping students understand the English orthographic system. 

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Oops!! We were offline for a bit–sorry!

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person running through maze
Photo by Stockcake

Oops! What I thought was just a blip a couple of months ago was not actually a blip in the internet causing my site to be blank. When the site notified me that my other red/white theme was no longer available, I didn’t have time to investigate what it took to update the theme. I didn’t think much of it since the site was still on and went about ending the school year– my final one.

A few weeks ago someone said the site was blank ..the page loaded but not the articles I’d written. Again, no time to investigate. Now that summer is in full swing and I’ve finished reorganizing my home office, I had time to revisit the blog today only to realize it was still left blank!

After a suuuuper short sleuthing moment, the issue was resolved … now I wish I’d done that a bunch of weeks ago! Things in technology often require so much more time, but I’m so glad this was easy!

My apologies if this caused any delays for you.

person typing with magic of butterflies uplifting from the keyboard
Photo by Stockcake


I have a couple of posts coming up in the next couple of weeks. While I’m not in my own classroom any longer, I have many projects I’m working on and can’t wait to share them.

Orthography

When the student pushes the learning envelope further…

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Some of the greatest moments of teaching come when the students push the envelope of learning even further than you intended. Just after returning from a long holiday break, we came across the digraph <ea>. I cannot recall what we were doing in that moment, what word we were wondering about, or why we stopped to discuss it. It was not the focus of that lesson but it was important none-the-less. Let me tell you about it!

Over a decade ago when talking about 2 vowels in a single syllable word, my students might have spoken out the old adage, “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking,” or “when two vowels stand side-by-side, the first one says its name with pride.” These sayings are made up to help students remember a long vowel instead of a short vowel sound in a word. Sayings “rules” were taught, and in some cases are still taught, in schools. Popular kids’ shows and oodles of teacher resources have sayings like these on posters, in songs, activities and even videos. PBS Kids’ Between the Lions has a song and video:  “When Two Vowels Go Walking.”

<img src="word.jpg" alt="2 vowels go walking in the word meat. ">
Photo credit: Between the Lions, Wiki Fandom page

 

Sayings like these are very common in many phoneme-first approaches but they aren’t really true as they fail far too many times.  The author of All About Learning Press website/blog tested this theory out on the top 1,000 most common words and found “only 43% of the words actually followed the rule, and a stunning 57% of the words did not!”  

<img src="1000words.jpg" alt="57% of 1000 words do not follow rule. ">
In a study done by All About Learning, she found 57% of the 1,000 most common words NOT following the “when 2 vowels go walking” rule.

 

Furthermore, when she analyzed “the top 2,000 words, the percentage shifted even further—only 36% of the words followed the rule, and 64% did not.” That is a lot of words that do not follow these sayings and yet they are still taught in schools all over country and on popular educational shows. Continue reading When the student pushes the learning envelope further… →

Orthography

The MANY Jobs of a Final e!!

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Many jobs of a final <e>?!? What?!?! When I was little, we learned that a final <e> makes a vowel long like it does in the words: bake, live, complete. There are more jobs?  Ok, I’ll concede that there have to be a couple of jobs since I do know that there are words with a final <e> that do not make a vowel long in words such as: have, above, live (which has a homograph ‘live’ as noted above). I recently heard a group of teachers talking about words like these, they would all end with a <v> and English doesn’t let words end in <v> so we place an <e> at the end. Why an <e> though? Why not another vowel letter?

Continue reading The MANY Jobs of a Final e!! →

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*Valentimes or Valentine’s???

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My small group of grade 5 students entered the classroom with this on the Viewsonic screen:

Lexical Matrix ‘vale’ from Latin valere

 

As they settled in for the half hour session, they began to talk about this image. Today being Valentine’s Day, one student quickly surmised that we might be looking at a matrix about words that make <valentine>. However, what she said next stopped me in my tracks, causing us to consider a whole new aspect of the matrix I was about to explore with them. This student said, “I don’t see ‘times‘ in that matrix so we must not be studying *Valentimes.”  I thought we were going to be building (synthesizing) words using morphemes from this matrix, but instead, we took the lead from my student to dive into misheard and misunderstood words.  In various circumstances, I’ve often said,

“What we hear is not always what we see!”

In other words, our spelling system’s well-ordered structures may be masked by the spoken syllables or auditory processing and she just confirmed it. So we hypothesized the morphemes she thought were in this word and discussed possible meanings of <times> and those potential relationships with our word <valentine>. We then concluded that neither meaning of ‘time’ is related to our word.


The student then focused on the first morpheme, <*valen>. She compared that to the base written on the screen <vale> and said, “Vale does not have the <n>!” We are still working on spelling out elements instead of reading them as a whole unit, but I let that go as it was not the focus of this clump of understanding.

“You’re right!, there isn’t an <n> in <vale>” I said, “What do you make of that?” Interestingly, she did not say what I thought she was going to say. Instead she said, “Which means this word isn’t related to <vale> which is why I don’t see times.” Hmmm… I pondered. At this point, another student had popped up to kindly but admonishingly remind her not to be a smarty-pants. This prompted me to remember something I’m shocked I’d forgotten to get out for the past 5 months!! I said, “While she isn’t exactly on target with that statement, she does deserve to hold onto this poster. We are all scholars in this room because you notice things about words. Whether she’s right or not, by her sharing her thinking out loud, I now know what it is and can help clear up things she’s confused about or be able to tell her her thinking is spot-on.”

Quote by the late Michel Rameau of Real Spelling

As I handed the poster to one student, I asked him, “Who is a scholar?” He smiled, sat up straighter and said, “ME!” In turn, we asked each of the students the same question, passing the poster until all had recognized him/herself as a scholar, landing with the student who had been sharing her thinking. This small moment is powerful. It let’s kids know that we don’t always have to answer correctly, we can simply notice things and then begin to learn even more. It frees them from the confinements of the fear of being wrong.

Back to the student’s interesting statement in which she claimed her hypothesis of <valen> was not the word we were studying on the screen. I expected her to tell us that her hypothesis was not correct because the base on the matrix on the screen was <vale>. Why would I make this assumption? I had given her no evidence. I simply anticipated she’d make the connection. When the students aren’t getting it, it isn’t them, it’s the teaching. Seeing this perspective allows me to ask productive questions instead of making a judgement of surprise that she didn’t get it. Judgements, however small, can have big implications on a student’s willingness to risk answering or expressing themselves. We went on to observing the matrix on the screen again — I highlighted the morphemes on the matrix that we use, then wrote a word sum to synthesize:

vale/ + ent + ine –> Valentine

from Latin valere

We then discussed capitalizing this word since we are referring to it as the name of a holiday. Once students saw this connection, it led to a discussion about how syllables, which are spoken units, can mask or hide the connection in meaning and can be mushed in our auditory processing, causing us to hear words or syllables differently.  I gave a few examples from my own kids — one mispronounced chocolate /ˈtʃɔk lɪk/ which, in case you aren’t familiar with IPA symbols, it sounded like “chaulk lick”. Another one of my kids, who as an adult still has trouble pronouncing correctly, says ‘ornament’ as /ˈoɹ dʌ ˌmənt/ which replaces /n/ with /d/.  We mentioned the relationship of ornament, ornate and adorn and as we did so, the adult parapro in my room was audibly stunned — she informed us that she has always pronounced it like my daughter and was shocked by this new understanding. There was joy on her face as she processed this. There is huge value in kids seeing adults learning right along side them. Sometimes it’s me learning with them, sometimes it’s a parapro, an ESL interventionist, other students or even their teachers when they go back to class with new nuggets of information. We showed how the spelling remains consistent, even though we may pronounce them differently. We also practiced the phonetics of saying /m/ and /n/ and feeling the air pass through our nasal cavity. This helps us understand how easy it is to mix these two sounds up as they are the only ones that do that. We found the difference is where our lips meet for /m/ and that they are open with /n/. When you say /n/ in a word like Valentine, the first <n> is not a clear /n/ with the tongue touching the alveolar ridge the same way as the final <n> does. Knowing the spelling of the suffixes <-ent> and <-ine> can help us far more than sounding this word out. We also learned that there is no suffix <*-emt> or <*ime> so even if we can’t sound it out, we wouldn’t use an <m> in this word.

After this discussion, I set the students free to create word sums on the board, using morphemes from the matrix on the screen. The only catch, was to create words that they could use meaningfully in a sentence. Afterward, we analyzed each of their word sums to see if it made a real word and to see that they applied any necessary spelling conventions. A couple of the students needed more individualized help to remember to write morphemes that are in line with each other on the matrix (cannot skip a box, can only read/work the matrix left to right). The others were independent. One made a word that wasn’t real but tried very hard to make a sentence with it anyway, fun to see her try and realize she had to concede to making a word she understood. Below are a few examples of some of the words the students created:

e + vale/ + u + ate/ + ion –> evaluation

 

vale/ + i + ant –> valiant

 

I want to highlight the word sum, written in purple marker, because this student worked out the Replace the <e> Spelling Convention by annotating her thinking underneath (V = vowel suffix; SSF = Single, Silent, Final <e>).

con + vale/ + esce/ + ent –> convalescent

The second student who followed the matrix and wrote: equ + i + vale/ + ent –> equivalent, did not know its meaning so we discussed it and drew some quick images to help her understand it.

equ + i + vale/ + ent –> equivalent

Time was running very short so we ended the lesson but the lesson did not end there. As the students lined up to go back to their regular classrooms, I heard a few of them saying they were so surprised that there wasn’t an <m> in Valentine and that they couldn’t wait to tell someone else.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Orthography

Is ‘y’ a Vowel — Really, Just Sometimes?

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How many times have you heard or uttered the phrase: “<a, e, i, o, u> & sometimes <y>”? Countless times I imagine.

The Vowel Hand Wreath

Several of my elementary groups recently finished a quick holiday Vowel Hand wreath project by tracing their hand, writing each of the vowels on the fingers and a <y> on the palm of the Vowel Hand. This project was inspired by a post from Rebecca Loveless in the Structured Word Inquiry Facebook Group. She had posted a picture of a teacher’s Vowel Hand Wreath with that particular phrase written on it. Interestingly, she noted in her comments that it really should say “…most of the time <y>” to which several people agreed, including me.

When I showed the picture to my students so they could see what we were going to make with our cut-outs, they knew immediately that we would change the saying to “most of the time <y>” because we have said this dozens of times by this point in the year. A couple of students were curious about the use of two different phrases. They had seen plenty of examples of <y> functioning as a vowel far more often than they’d seen examples of <y> as a consonant. They wondered why anyone would say “sometimes <y>” when it was clear in our work, that it simply wasn’t the most logical choice. After discussing that sayings tend to sound catchy (they agreed that “sometimes <y> rolled off the tongue a bit better than “most of the time <y>) and that people tend to follow what they read in books or hear in their university classes or professional development. This saying has been around for decades, so we decided that people just went with it, didn’t think about questioning it. However, the students felt there was a more informative way to convey the job of <y> in our language. Continue reading Is ‘y’ a Vowel — Really, Just Sometimes? →

history, Orthography, Structured Word Inquiry

Understanding Etymology/History Sparks the Teacher in a Student

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What a great year to begin teaching about spelling through the lens of Structured Word Inquiry (SWI) — this year we have several new resources to use that will help spread the awareness of the sense and meaning of the orthography of the English language!

First, we have this wonderful resource that helped a student, Sam, understand the reason for the spelling of ‘the’ — we used this new resource from Fiona Hamilton and Rebecca Loveless called The High Frequency Word Project (link). In this resource, they have short activities for students to do while learning how to spell words and learn about their histories — their stories. Sam loves history and has difficulty learning the spelling of words. He was so excited to learn about the histories of many words. One day, after using this resource for about a week, he proclaimed:

“I love history, and I know I can learn how to spell and read words when I know their stories! Everyone should love this stuff!”

This resource will help Sam and his classmates associate the spelling with an interesting story — the best way for many people to learn, especially those with learning challenges. How wonderful that the students will also use opportunities to learn how to express their learning with each other and with a broader audience as well!

Watch this short video (1 minute 30 sec) of Sam explaining the etymology of the word ‘the’ that he learned from The hfw Project and Etymonline.

Continue reading Understanding Etymology/History Sparks the Teacher in a Student →

Structured Word Inquiry

March On In to Word Studies with “Shamrock”!

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Nearly 365 days ago I did a thing that I forgot about. I made a video of a word study that my students and I had begun investigating at the beginning of March 2020.  The pandemic had just shown it’s ugly face and lives all around the world were turned upside-down. At the time, we had just been sent home to try to figure out quarantining while teaching from home. We worried about the health of our children, our families, our students, friends, neighbors, even strangers. We had no idea how long the shut-down would last. We hoped it might only be a few weeks or months at the most– it was unfathomable. Nearly 1 year later, so much in our world has changed and yet we all try to do as many familiar things as we can to bring back a sense of what used to be, our norm. Our school just kicked off March Is Reading Month and soon it will be St. Patrick’s Day.

As I began thinking ahead to St. Patrick’s Day, I kept feeling like I’d forgotten something. I checked for my keys and wallet multiple times over the past few days. Finally, at the end of the school day today, it hit me — I had made a St. Paddy’s Day word investigation video last year!! I quickly searched my blog, but did not find it. I searched both of my YouTube channels, but did not find it. I searched my laptop and school computer hoping to find the video — no luck. Then dread set in as I recalled that the piece-meal computer system I had been using at home last year, which had suddenly been thrown into being overworked, died after a few weeks of teaching from home. Oh no! I sure hoped it wasn’t on ‘Ole Bessy, her memory left before she even knew it was gone. I vaguely recall several people commenting about how much they liked the video, that it had clearly demonstrated all four of the Essential Questions of SWI, so I must’ve posted it in my Facebook Group for Structured Word Inquiry at some point…..but where was the actual video file??

Finally, I remembered to check my Zoom account recordings!!   Oh, thank goodness! While organization has never been my strong suit, especially abstract computer files– this past year has been challenging to say the least– finding time to create lessons for a virtual setting took all the available time I had. Besides, I totally own my disorganized filing systems– it just isn’t in my wheel-house. I secretly feel giddy & satisfied when someone shares the meme that a messy desk is the sign of a genius (and stick my nose up at the meme that says an organized person is a sign of a genius –wink, wink!). I digress. At last, I have found it and done so in time for this year’s St. Patrick’s Day studies — I feel so relieved!

From memegenerator.net

This video lesson takes you through an investigation started last March by one of my students who quietly wondered aloud if shamrocks shared any relationship to real rocks.  Students in my classes are not shy about asking questions about potential relationships because they know we can find the answer and that they will learn something even if their thought or question ends up inaccurate. I’m amazed at the questions they ask or the mutterings they verbalize even when they don’t realize they’ve asked them aloud! I often wonder how much confusion my previous students kept hidden in their too-afraid-to-ask minds before I taught SWI, that saddens me a bit.

I much prefer to relish in the joy of kids sharing what makes them curious.

My favorite mentor has a saying we have posted in our classroom, “Scholars are people who notice things” (and thanks to my friend, Mary Beth, we have an actual poster of that instead of having it scrawled in my handwriting on a piece of butcher paper!).

Visit Mary Beth’s blog to learn from her rich writings and order you own set of SWI posters

 

What happens when kids share their curiosity or their hypothesis about a word? First, let me tell you what does not happen; students do not hear, “Rocks, why would you think rocks is related to shamrocks?” nor “What? No! We don’t have time for that nonsense.”  OH NO, SIR!!

Instead, they hear,

“hmmmm… I’m not sure, what makes you wonder about this?” and

“Let’s go find out!”

Sometimes, we don’t get to the other lesson I had planned (but don’t tell my boss!); sometimes, the word is put on a Wonder Wall of Words We Are Curious About; sometimes, students investigate these on their own; sometimes they don’t; sometimes I squeeze out a few extra minutes to lead an investigation. In any case, they learn an awful lot about the sense & meaning and the structures of the language they speak, hear, read and write every day. They apply that knowledge to read with higher accuracy, at faster rates and most importantly, with higher comprehension. They write and spell with more accuracy and fluency. Even more than that, they remain curious and learn to think critically, knowing they need to find evidence to back up their hypothesis about a word sum or a related word.  This takes time. How much time? It takes the time it takes. Nothing is lost, only gains are made. They may momentarily depart from the lesson-at-hand but they will learn far more than the lesson-at-hand.

“They may get carried away and depart the text.” From Goodnight Opus, by Berkeley Breathed

When we study one word, we almost never only study one word.

The result is often one, two, three or more additional rabbit-holes/branches/paths/meanderings/jaunts/you-name-its……and it’s wonderful, scholarly and addicting!

I hope you enjoy learning about the history and relationships of the word shamrock and the many other words we encounter in this video. There are 2 parts — after minute 15 or so the initial work with shamrock is finished. But why stop there? There is a second part that may surprise you even more. Happy March Is Reading Month and Happy St. Patrick’s Day 2021!

Structured Word Inquiry

Inauguration 2021

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Wednesday, January 20, 2021 marks another turn of presidents in the United States of America. This post is a near carbon copy of the post I did back in 2017 for that year’s inauguration. The PDF of the Slideshow lesson has been updated to reflect the incoming inauguration ceremony of Joe Biden with Kamala Harris as Vice-President. There is no political information on these slides, they aim to bring clarity to the word “inauguration”, to help us understand why this word is used for this ceremony.

January 20, 2021 is an historic day in America, we inaugurate our new President, Joe Biden.  While  attempting to give my students a deeper understanding of this ceremony, it led to some interesting investigations.

A swearing in of Joe Biden (unknown ceremony/year). Source: Deseret.com

 

Inauguration_Slideshow

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This is a slideshow I created with my students as we analyzed the word “inauguration” and investigated the trails it led us on. These investigations helped us understand the etymology (historical origin) and the structure of this word along with the many others it is related to….

“You buy one base and you get plenty more for free!”

(said by an SWI friend–Ann Whiting, it’s a great motto). 

Historically, an augur is someone who prophesies good things to come.  It was said that an augur based his predictions on the behavior of birds which may have led to an increase in crops at that time. An augur was someone who paid attention to nature, who noticed when the behavior patterns of these aviaries changed and one who noticed what occurred around him.  He may have been very intuitive to pick up on the tiny clues and was able to predict when it was a good time to plant or harvest crops based on the behavior he noted in the birds.

We talked about how we use this in modern times……even without the aide of television, radio and internet weather channels, we can still notice the behavior of the birds and make predictions today. When I see 20-30 birds anxiously vying for position at the feeder on my deck on a sunny, winter day, my first instinct is to think they are hungry and need us to put more seed in the feeder.  Upon closer inspection, the feeder is full.  I wonder, “What’s up with these birds who act like it’s their last meal?!?”  An hour or two later, I notice that it isn’t as sunny anymore, big, fluffy clouds are moving in and the air feels a bit damp and chilled. I begin to wonder if we are going to get a snow storm; in that moment, I am a bit of an augur predicting the coming storm.  I check the weather report and sure enough, 2-4 inches of snow are due by early evening.  Our little feathered friends were fattening themselves up for the rest of the day so they could huddle in their nests during the storm.

Historically, I’m certain some people were better at noticing things in nature and predicting when it may be a good time to plant crops or increase the harvest before an early winter set in.  People with that sense and skill were regarded highly because of their ability to make nature-inspired good predictions that may bring good things to a village. Ceremonies, inaugurations were held for all to come and listen to these prophesies that were based on good omens, the augur noticed.

So, how is the modern-day use of this term relevant to its historical use?  The bound base <augur> retains its denotation of “predict, foretell, seer” with the idea of bringing an “increase” or goodness of some sort (denotation of <aug>).

When a new president is sworn into office, he takes an oath,

he makes a promise of goodness and truth

to the American people during an inaugural ceremony.

We also use the word, augur in examples such as these:  Based on the team’s winning streak, he augurs winning the title.  or  Banks are auguring it is a good time to invest in the stock market. However, we also discovered what it is NOT—see the slide show for that little nugget!

We can synthesize (build) words using the bound base such as:

 augur + ed –>  augured

in + augur + ate –>  inaugurate

in + augur + ate/ + ion –>  inauguration

in + augur + ate/ + ion + s –>  inaugurations

 

How is <aug> a bit different? It was difficult to determine if these shared a historical root based on the etymology which used words such as perhaps, presumably originally, probably, when describing the history.

I can find 2 Latin roots associated with these 2 bound bases:

  • augurare (denotation “to act as an augur, predict) and 
  • augere (denotation “increase”).  

Latin had suffixes that were removed when these came into English (-are, -ere) which leave us with bound bases of <aug> and <augur>.

A bound base is a base element that requires an affix (1 or more)

in order to surface as a word in English.

 

<aug> is in words such as augment, augmentation, and August (I’ll let you discover the story behind that one–click here)!  An augmentation device is one that increases one’s ability to do something. We can synthesize words with this bound base such as:

aug + ment –>  augment

aug + ment + ing –>  augmenting

The Latin root augere, is even related to words such as auxiliary (increased support); auction (a sale of increased bids) and author (go look this one up, here)!!  Such intriguing quests….the best quests are those that you go on to seek answers but end up with more questions!  

View the slide show (above) to see both lexical word matrices, word sums, as well as what it is NOT!  All because we wanted to learn more about the historic event that happened this afternoon in our nation’s Capitol!

If interested, scroll through this blog to January 2017 to see the original post and slides from 2017.

Welcome to our hive of busy, buzzing, bees, hard at work as Word Scientists!