Happy About Spelling on International Day of Happiness

We are too happy about spelling on International Day of Happiness not to share these unedited videos!

With at least 5 unfinished drafts about our learnings from this year in my Draft folder — I’m just gonna make this entry short but sweet for fear of running out of time to complete the post!  One thing’s for sure, when one begins to understand a language that previously appeared to be crazy or weird, one does not want to post about it in a way that is less than scholarly — so as it often happens, I begin writing, then want to double check my work (for good reason!!).  Then the enemy of lack of time and my personal need for extended processing time interrupt that all-important work.  I actually don’t mind in some ways because when I set something aside for a bit then come back to it, I see errors or less than accurate information that I know I can fix or I learn something in-between time and am glad I waited to post so I could clear it up.

Today however, is not one of those days — this topic is time-sensitive.  We are participating, school-wide in the International Day of Happiness today so my groups began investigating the words ‘happy’, ‘happiness’, ‘happily’, etc. to see what we could learn about their spelling.

 

 

We tried taping ourselves during the lesson but it did not work out so instead, I taped myself giving a mini-lesson.  The first video is a condensed version — 7 minutes long — about the relationships between the spellings of words in the family ‘happy’.   (NOTE:  volume increases about half-way into it)

 

 

 

The 2nd video is longer and more packed with information about structured word inquiry, matrices, orthography, relationships of words, histories of words, etc. — it lasts about 15 minutes (NOTE:  sound begins 15 seconds into it).

 

 

Both videos/lessons are not perfection — what lesson ever is? I would change things if I had time for editing and software to do it. For example, in the 7 minute video, I totally transpose the letters <i> and <y> in one section, and I used ‘happy’ in a sentence and called it a noun, but it is an adjective (She is happy.); but I think the overall understandings can be gleaned from the videos and that the information serves its purpose. At some point, I will remake them but would rather explain errors at this point and move forward with investigating more about this base.

We have plans to take this learning even deeper by further analyzing the word ‘happy’ and looking for more relatives — watch for that video soon!

Go out and spread some happiness!  It’s contagious!

There’s Strength in Learning about Lovely Valentines

These past few days my groups have been learning about the structures of words that we use often in the middle of February….. love and Valentine. We learned the origins of each of these words.  <love> comes from Old English and is a free base (can be a word on its own without any affixes).  We learned that <valentine> comes from Latin and has a bound base of <vale> (a bound base is an element that must have an affix attached to surface as a word in English).  Bound bases are very useful and can be hidden in many other words but only those that share the etymon (the denotation of the root word) are related.

We finished analyzing words to see which elements each was made from, looking for connections of meaning and structure along the way. Some of the words we analyzed:

loving –>     love + ing    (spelling convention: replace single, silent, final <e>)

loved –>      love + ed

lovely–>       love + ly

loveliness–> love + ly + ness   (spelling convention change y to i)

lovebugs –>  love + bug + s  (compound word: no spelling convention)

lovable –>     love + able  (hmm…2 acceptable ways to spell this one!)

unloved –>  un + love + ed    (prefix: no spelling convention; suffix — yes)

beloved –>  be + love + ed    (hint — we’ll talk about this one later)

Along with these wonderfully, lovely word sums, we also discussed the parts of speech each of these words can be — may depend on how it is used in context — grammar, grammar, everywhere!

He loves pizza. (verb)

Oh, pizza and steak, my two favorite loves! (noun)

The girl has a beloved dog. (adj.)

That dog is her beloved. (noun)

We also learned that some words have more than one way to pronounce them, like ‘beloved’ which can be /bəlʌvd/ or /bəlʌvɪd/ — the suffix <-ed> has an allophone — more than one way to pronounce this grapheme. We analyzed and organized our list of affixes into a matrix.  We made a rough draft before making a final copy to display in the hallway.

One of the last things this lovely group of 3rd graders did, was to learn about other words that may or may not have a direct relationship with <love>. We did not find any relatives that share the same etymon even with a different spelling so we did not have any words to place in the oval (words that share etymon AND structure, spelling of the base, go in the matrix; words that share an etymon but not the same spelling of the base go in the oval).

We did have a few words that are often synonymous with ‘love’ or used to show our love for our friends such as:  caring, kind, and friend.  We placed those words outside of the oval on our white papers.

We found a word that shares the same letters and sounds as our word, it was <glove>.  But, we quickly determined that their was no meaningful relationship to <love>.  In this 30 second video, you’ll see the kids practicing this learning…..it takes a lot of thinking to see letters with our eyes and hear phonemes with our ears and STILL understand that they are in no way related.  There are only 26 letters in the alphabet, you know, so there are bound to be repeated letters and sounds but without a meaningful connection, those are just random things to remember.  We have proven, through the progress and confidence the students are gaining with studying the structures and meanings of words, that the letters and sounds just are not as important to our learning as the meaning and structure connections.

The fifth grade group tackled the bound base element <vale> which denotes strength, worth, power, health” and is part of the word ‘valentine’ –we were surprised to learn it did not mean love but we can see how its denotations are meaningful.  When we give a valentine to our friends or loved ones, we are showing them the strength of our affection or friendship with them.

Some of the words we were surprised to find connected with this base element whose origin is the same Latin etymon of valere, are ‘convalescent’ and ‘convalesce’.

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

con + vale/ + esce –>  convalesce

What most of us thought of as ‘an old folks home’ is actually a place to live while one regains strength and health.  Clearly, this is a related word and provides a much deeper connection to both valentine and these two words.    We also learned that the pronunciation shifts on the suffix <-esce> from a short /e/ to a long /e/ (IPA  /ɛ/ to  /i:/).

Studying bound bases of Latin origin often generates much longer lists of related words, both inside the matrix as well as inside the oval, so this group needs a bit more time to complete their work.  They are working in pairs or trios and have had many days with one or both partners is absent (we may need to study viruses next!), however, one group was lucky enough to have less interruptions and has displayed their work.

Our first graders were in on the action too —                                                                 creating a valuable [vale/ + u + able –> ] resource for their learning as well!

We hope you have a lovely Valentine‘s Day with your loved ones and we hope your love is [equ + i + vale + ent –>]  equivalent to that of an ocean!

An Inaugural Investigation

Today is an historic day in America, we just inaugurated President Donald J. Trump.  Giving my students a deeper understanding of this ceremony led to some interesting investigations.

 

Inauguration_Slideshow (this link takes you to a pdf of the slideshow of this investigation)

Clicking on the link above will take you to a PDF of the slideshow I created with my students to help them 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 a SWI friend–wish I could remember who said it, 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 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 Latin 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 that requires an affix (1 or more) to surface in a word; <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 ones 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 seeking answers and end up with more questions!  

View the slide show to see both lexical word matrices, word sums, and more about the historic event that happened this afternoon in our nation’s capitol.

 

History in the Making

Today was an historical day in the world of working together as a group and as learners who are generally challenged by the English language.  Today, the students broke out of the shell that has encapsulated them most of their lives through searching for meaning and structure of a word and by helping each other reason out a word sum with NO teacher prompting, guided questioning or leading.  This moment was so rich and so profound, I had to take a breath in to hold back a tear or two from escaping my gleeful, smiling eyes.

We started the lesson by looking at a Social Studies chapter from their General Education classroom — quite happily, I am able to support their reading, spelling, & writing by doing SWI (Structured Word Inquiry) with concepts and vocabulary from their GE curriculum.  I asked what they needed to understand deeper/better about the chapter on Native Americans. They said they were not able to tell what the words in red ink meant (vocabulary words).  We made a list:  origin stories, migration route, environments, & adapt.  

We looked at the first term in parts:  first we tackled <stories>.  I wrote this word on the board and asked the students to analyze it as we did last school year (without guidance which would help me determine how much review would be required and plan future lessons).  When the group grew quiet with uncertainty, I encouraged them to hypothesize the structure of this word — reminding them that a hypothesis allows us to think and not worry about correctness — we would test out each theory, we would find evidence to determine which hypothesis is right or wrong and we always learn from both of those experiences.

Within a few seconds, downcast eyes began to lift to the board and I could see their minds shift gears.  A few still met with trepidation while still a few others raised their hands to give it a try.

Here’s what was suggested from <stories>:

  • Student #1 said:             <stor>  + <ies>
  • Student #2 said:             <store>  + <s>
  • Student #3 said:             <story/(i)>  + <es>      “s-t-o-r-y, change y to i; plus es”

It is here that the real learning began when St #2 declared,  “OH!! I see what I forgot! My word sum needs to be <store + …….i? no….I forgot the <i> but….hmmm” and he trailed off, clearly recognizing that he knew he was forgetting something but couldn’t make it fit his word sum.    Then St #3 said, “I think mine’s right ‘cuz I remember, ‘change y to i when you add <es>'”.  Student #2 defended his use of <store> and St #1 quickly reminded him that <store> is pronounced /stor/ not /story/. Another student chimed in to say that <store> is a place you buy things from and the collective agreement from the group was audible, “Oh yeah!” which came loudest from St #2.

From here, much discussion ensued among the majority of kids who were present. The quietest kids were the 2 who are new to our group this year.  There was a wonderful debate, very mature, no demanding tones or indignation; simply discussion of meaning and suffixes and spelling conventions.  All the while, I stood there, biting my lip to stop myself from interjecting to provide clarity, guide or lead.  The students did not need me to interrupt their remembering of past lessons or the processing of the 2 words before them.  While they discussed and debated, the one thing that rang clear for me as I simply watched and took this moment in, was that they were all around the evidence but no one was confident in declaring why their word sum worked or did not work, even St #3 who appeared to understand the relationship between <stories> and <story> and who’d rattled off the spelling convention with ease or the others who agreed with this convention.  Some of the students were not convinced that <store> and <story> were not the same (a few forget that <e> is silent at the end).

After I shared my absolute joy with the group at their stellar debate, I drew a picture on the board –the rectangle barely surfaced before someone blurted out that I was drawing a store and our word is stories, they do not mean the same thing! And yet, still the connection was not quite solidified in their minds (quizzical looks on their faces told the story!).  So I asked them, “What are stories?; Are they buildings where you can buy things?” Answers drew us to the conclusion that stories are the plural form of story and a story is something you can tell or write that tells about something.  Once the students saw the connection to the singular form <story> they were confident they were on the right meaning track and their use of the spelling convention of changing <y> to <i> was applicable.

We then looked at the hypotheses on the board and began to reason out their accuracy with the evidence we had come up with: <story> as the base word; spelling convention of changing <y> to <i> when adding a vowel suffix (more to this convention at a later date). We reasoned we had no evidence, past or present, for an <-ies> suffix and that <stor> was not a bound or free base element.  We recognized that <store> + <s> would give us the plural form of <stores> where we buy things.  In conclusion, St #3’s hypothesis made sense in its structure and meaning.

As a group we celebrated this moment of connection, meaning, and mountain of evidence we’d collected. The next little gem of knowledge was about to be unveiled — not given, but unveiled through thinking, linking it to SS, and physically clipping off a piece of paper …. the students eventually recognized that the word <story> is a clip of the word <history>!

A lot of time had gone by and we hadn’t even gotten to complete the first vocabulary word!  No fear, no worries, only smiles and a sigh of awesomeness; I know these students gained more from these last 20 minutes than they would have had we read the terms from their book with the definition and tried to memorize them (besides, they’d already tried it that way and were here, asking for help with these terms!).

So, onto the first part of this term, <origin>:  a quick look at Etymonline revealed the denotation of the Latin nominative root origo “a beginning, a start, source, descent, lineage, birth”; putting these two words together, gave the students a deeper sense of what their text book meant by Native American origin stories.  These would be stories that reveal the history of this culture, from the beginning of its time, not their current culture or stories. The students’ tone and gestures told me all I needed to know– they understood with deeper meaning — how do I know?  I saw it in their exuberant smiles, heard their cheer, watched them lift their arms in victory — that’s as real as it gets!

We had minutes to spare before the end of the session, so we tackled <migration> our hypotheses came at rapid speed, the discussion and debate even faster.

img_migr_

We quickly ascertained that 2 of the hypothesese were not even going to be up for consideration — as one student loudly proclaimed, “<-tion> can’t be a suffix — remember the video from last year?!?! We proved it!”  I couldn’t resist pointing out that the there would have to be 2 <t>’s in <migration> if we had one at the end of the base and one at the beginning of the suffix as well — hey, the more the evidence ithe better, right?!   Before we ended the session (Mrs. B’s stomach was growling, it was lunchtime for me!) we all felt very comfortable with <migrate> as a base with <ion> as the suffix. Tomorrow, we will begin testing our final hypothesis that <migr> is a bound base by looking at Etymonline and the Word Searcher.

Take a moment to notice the poster hanging in the picture above, it is of a caterpillar’s journey to becoming a butterfly with a quote from Real Spelling’s Michel, that says, “Scholars are people who notice things“.  The poster was inspired by Mary Beth Steven, a teacher in Wisconsin who blogs about her class’ SWI learnings, she made a big poster of this quote for her classroom and shared it with our SWI community.  I found it too valuable not to copy! When kids notice things that build on their learning or solidify a concept or denounce a theory, it’s worth pointing out to them.  It makes them stronger learners, more aware of what makes sense and in turn, builds their confidence.

I am excited to continue noticing these little scholars’ learning this year!

Celebrate Good Times

The end of another year has arrived.  This is always such special time of year, when we celebrate all that the students have accomplished and we say good-bye to our 5th grade students who move onto the next school building for 6th grade.

Matrix_Celebr

(Did you notice how many words have the suffix ?!?! Remember why we drop the non-syllabic !)

 

celebr + ate/ + ed –>  celebrated

celebr + ate/ + ing –>  celebrating

celebr + ate/ + ory –> celebratory

celebr + ate/ + ion + s–>  celebrations

celebr + ity –>  celebrity

celebr + ity/ (i) + es –>  celebrities

 

Each of my groups has their own celebration in which we pass out awards for demonstration of character traits that make each of us unique or that help our group learn well together.  It’s one of my favorite times of the year.  While we compliment or acknowledge many of these traits daily during our group time, there’s just something special about being recognized on paper — seeing the kids eyes sparkle, a smile form and seeing them sit a little taller after receiving their official recognition makes these moments special.

Ah, the 5th graders….such a tearful time — while I smile and celebrate with them, I am always holding back tears of knowing that I will miss them.  The crew this year, have all been with me for at least 2 years, some as long as 4 years.  I’ve watched them grow as learners and as young people. I’ve experienced a large part of their early learning journey with them.  After we passed out our Character Trait Awards, we read a poem and letter I wrote to each of them and feasted on some delicious pizza and snacks.  We ended our celebration with a game of Pie Face….it involves a huge dollop of whipped cream, a timer and a slap-stick hand that if you’re unlucky, or lucky…depending on how you look at it, may come splatting into your face!  Such a fun way to celebrate an especially fun group of kids!

Whipped Cream-Nosed Selfie

Whipped Cream-Nosed Selfie

Scroll down for a few pics and video clips of us anticipating getting creamed!  The videos uploaded sideways..don’t know why…but still fun to watch–be sure to turn on your sound too!

Thanks to all my students for a fantastic year of great learning!  Have a wonderful and relaxing summer!

 

Love, Mrs. B

The Debut of the SWI News!!

THE STAR GROUP’S LATEST ADVENTURE BEGAN WITH A SIMPLE SUFFIX LESSON AND ENDED UP AS A COOL NEW PROJECT!!  

They decided that others needed to know about this suffix information,

so they created the SWI News

Please take a few minutes (6 min and 12 seconds to be exact) to watch this informative and entertaining newscast.  The students are hopeful that teachers will show the video to their students and they are eager for their families to watch.  They are excited to pass along this nugget of knowledge to you!  Feel free to post a question or comment as well.

 

These 5th graders are hoping to make this a monthly Newscast Series to bring you the latest orthographic conventions, evidence and knowledge.  Orthography is spelling and they know that if you can spell a word, you can read a word!!

Today’s segment questions the suffix <-tion> and provides evidence of the real suffix being         <-ion>.

Note: after reviewing their first filmed event, the group would like to add a few notes for clarity.

  • When announcing word sums (base + suffix) they would like to point out that the word ‘equals’ should have been the phrase ‘is rewritten as’.
  • In the next video, they want to be sure to announce the spellings of each word instead of saying the base and spelling the suffix.
  • They would also like to clarify why there may be an ‘e’ crossed off on some of the base words. This is due to a common spelling convention of dropping the final, single, silent e when adding a vowel suffix. They also think this spelling convention might be a good one to make for their next newscast!

Thank you for your understanding of any small faux-pas due to their nerves as they participated in their very first filmed event!  We want to thank you for watching and hope that you learned something new today!

IMG_1865

Mrs. Barnett and the Star Group wish to thank our videographer and mentor, Fenton High School Senior, Nick Campbell for his time, videotaping & editing skills and for his advice on Newscasting!!

Greed and Patience

Matrix_greedThe Diamond Group (4th graders) are studying Fables at the moment.  A common theme among the fables we are reading is greed.  This theme also provided a nice transition from our author study of Patricia Polacco who often writes and speaks of bullying and the consequences of greed.  Last Friday we watched a speech she gave at a school in which she talked about greed, bullying and learning disabilities along with kindness, compassion and finding one’s own strengths.  The students listened to her set ground rules before she passed the wishing stone  around to the kids to make wishes upon. I was humbled by the understanding my students had of why she set rules that they could not wish for anything that could be bought for them or done for them….no money, toys, etc., that greed was likely to take over and they’d want more. She also said they could not wish to change anybody, because we can take action to help someone by showering each other in kindness.  The students gave exceptional responses to the discussions we held after the video, some even surprised me with their self-reflections and grasp of the message she intended to convey. (Click on the above link to view the video)

This week, as we began studying the theme of greed in fables, The Goose with the Golden Eggs, The Lion and the Hare and The Stonecutter Who was Never Satisfied (all found on ReadWorks.org), we also wrote word sums with the free base word <greed>.  Digging into a word study takes time and leads to distraction — in a good way–the best way, actually.  It leads to reviewing what the word means, what it doesn’t mean, connections to their own lives, and noticings by the students (“Oh! I see a ‘y’ suffix like we did last week…” and “Wait, what about the word …”).  We didn’t get as far with the reading of these fables as I wanted to, but I spent a glorious amount of time being impressed by the kids’ reading and reasoning skills as they came across unfamiliar words–this is another amazing distraction that warrants spending quality time praising their efforts, their noticings and wonderings– “Look Mrs. B., I can cover up the <-ly> suffix and I can see the beginning is <even> but I’m not sure if <tual> is another suffix or a base” — how can you ignore the richness of this type of wondering?  It’s impossible unless the clock runs out…which of course it did.  But alas, there’s always tomorrow!

It was on the second day, I got greedy!  The lessons we do with SWI take longer than many other things we do because we go off on many different trails.  While these trails are rich and deep and filled with discovery and meaning, I fight the battle with Father Time….I want it ALL — time to dig deep and practice reading and writing text; but 45 min goes by far too quickly.  In my greed, I planned to start the lesson with an Entrance Ticket, which is a way for the kids to show me what they remember from the prior lesson; which I thought we’d finish in 2-3 minutes then have time to finish reading the stories and move on to the comprehension questions.   The best laid plans were meant to be broken, reminding me of the flexible nature of teaching.  On this Entrance Ticket was the task to write 2 of the word sums from the day before and 1 additional word that wasn’t covered.  The kids wrote two of the few we’d done the previous day:

greed + y –>  greedy

greed + y (i) + er –>  greedier

greed + y (i) + ness –>  greediness

 

However, when they each came up with their own, it did not make sense. I was surprised that in the silence of this 2-3 minute task, all of the kids (group of 5) chose the same suffix or derivation of it with the same ending result — a word they thought sounded like our word, but had a completely different meaning!  The words were:

greed + ing –>  greeding

greed + ing + s –>  greedings

I was completely surprised and not surprised at the same time.  Surprised because, after so many lessons about meaning being central to any word study coupled with feedback from the kids during previous lessons, I felt the kids knew that whatever word they came up with had to connect to the base word of <greed>.   However, they had just demonstrated that the sounds they process in their mind independently, often do not assimilate with meaning yet which does not surprise me.  Language processing is often a weaker area for people who struggle with reading.  Words often sound a lot like other words.  Lately, because of the holiday season, they’ve been hearing ‘greetings‘ quite often.  When we discussed the meaning of that word, they knew instantly that it did not connect with the meaning of ‘greed’ and yet, they still had such quizzical looks on their faces….they were certain these two sounded just alike.  After some practice with the 2 base words and feeling where our tongue taps as we say the /t/ and /d/ sounds (eureka! — it’s in the same spot! — just a difference of air flow — try it!) the quizzical looks dissipated and heads began to nod in understanding.

I learned that I need to take a step back and sideways sometimes … provide more opportunities for the kids to independently practice writing their own word sums more often.  I think up til now, I’ve provided more guidance than I realized.  Time to gently push them out of the nest and begin to flap their own wings and make these discoveries of connecting what we hear/say to the intended meaning.  I also learned that I need to be more patient with the pace of the lessons.  If I had rushed this lesson, maybe skipped the Entrance Ticket, I may have missed a very crucial opportunity to right a misunderstanding.

Watching the students’ faces go from confusion to “ah-ha!” when they finally recognized why ‘greeding‘ was not the same as ‘greeting‘ but also that they were not alone in their misunderstanding and that paying attention to how sounds are formed in the mouth can be a clue too, was pure joy.  Joy in the fact that they felt the discovery — I led them there with questioning and wonderings but they made the discoveries.  There is joy in making mistakes when we celebrate the things we learn because of it.

I learned that I if I am greedy with my expectations in teaching with SWI, we risk losing grand opportunities to learn at a deeper level than is recognizable on the surface.  I learned that although I can’t see how we will fit everything in this school year, that if I am patient, I will be open to setting up and recognizing these moments which will be of much greater benefit to the students than rushing through to the finish line.

Hmmmm…..there is another fable I am reminded of……….The Tortoise and the Hare……I believe that fits well here!

 

Rabbit-Turtle-300x126

 

Thankful for ….SWI, food, family, and much more!

November 23, 2015…..

Me:  “So, what word do you think we should use this week to make word sums with?”

Students:  ” Um….let’s see…..how about ‘turkey’!  or ‘stuffing’!  Wait, we should probably study ‘Thanksgiving’ since it is happening this week!”

Student 1:  “Or, we should study just ‘thanks‘ because we can make a lot of words with that.”

Student 2:  “We could study ‘giving‘ because we could make ‘give, gives and giving‘ with it.”

Me:  “Great ideas!  Since we can make many word sums with ‘thank‘ , let’s try that one, then we will try to make a matrix!”

 

RESULTS:

  • Beautifully spelled out word sums together,
  • Many “Ah-HA! moments with new learnings (especially when analyzing <giving>)  and
  • Matrix making–planning, organizing & execution!

 

Heart Group — Grade 2

 

 

Group_Heart  Thanks_heart group 2   Thanks_heart group1

 

Diamond Group — Grade 4

 

FullSizeRender      FullSizeRender (1)

 

 

Star Group — Grade 5

 

FullSizeRender (2)   IMG_1872

 

 

Classroom Board

 

Thank_tchr         Thank_matrix drawn

 

Tuesday we will journal about things we are thankful for!  At the top of my list—  finding the SWI Community to learn from!

Happy Holidays All

Mrs. Barnett

 

Word Study of DYSLEXIA

October??  Where did it go??

I started this blogpost well over a month ago but time ran away from me and I’m just getting back to finishing it.  However— time is not on my side any more today than it was a month ago, so it’s going to be short and sweet!

My 5th grade group studied the word <dyslexia> and took some action to raise awareness of this common learning disability during the month of October.  Along the way, we learned a lot more than just what Dyslexia means.IMG_1865

In the pictures below, you can see we found 2 Bound Base Words from this single word and a suffix:

<dys>  +  <lex>  +  <ia>  –>  dyslexia 

From there, we learned how to use dictionaries, Etymonline, the Word Searcher and Mini-Matrix Maker to find definitions, word origins, other related words and a grid forming program to make neatly typed versions of our posters.  We hung the posters in the hallway for the school to view.

Some of the best “take-aways” from this work was learning how to search our minds for relationships between words when using the Word Searcher.  The list of words that have <dys> or <lex> in them was lengthy–we had to ween the list down by finding words that held the same/similar meanings and ignoring the rest.  For example:  the words <duplex> and <flexible> came up in our search but they do not have anything to do with the bound base of <lex> which has to do with words, so we chopped our study list to about 1/8 its original size (oh yeah…..we used this to show fractions too!).

Here are the posters this group made:

Word Study

Word Study

Word Study

Word Study

Student’s Show of Support on Veteran’s Day & More…

Some mornings start out a bit slower than others –maybe its cloudy or windy and rainy or just that I haven’t pulled the shades up yet to let the sun begin to warm the day.  Sometimes, we don’t need the physcial sunshine to warm our souls–it is often caused by student action.  Last week a moment such as this occured, William entered my classroom with a face lit up with pride.  He was dressed in his military outfit, brandishing dog tags and a new book called, Military Animals, that he’d picked up at the Book Fair the night before while he and his family attended Parent – Teacher Conferences.

 

 

Veteran's Day

Veteran’s Day

 

This was one of those rare days when the other members of our group were either absent or had a special activity in their GE classroom, leaving William and I to alter the lesson plans to fit a one-to-one session.  We took full advantage and took a Book Walk through this wonderful informational book on all types of military animals–including insects!  As we read, we determined a common theme among the heros of war times and took a closer look at several of the words that highlighted the theme.

 

SWI with Vteran's Day words

SWI with Veteran’s Day words

We searched these words on etymonline.com to seek their origins and history.  We looked them up in dictionaries and between the sources evaulated which words described them best and with consistency.  Here is what we learned:

military –>  milit (-is)  +  ary 

(one who marches in a troop)

 

courageous –>  courage  +  ous

(inner strength, bravery)

 

loyalty –>  loyal  +  ty

(trustful)

 

My personal favorite for the day was <veteran> because I struggle with spelling this word correctly–I often misspell it as <vetran> most likely because of its pronunciation /vetran/ and that I’d never connected the base of <veter> with other words.  In looking this word up, we found a connection to the word <veterinarian>.

veteran –>  veter +  an

(from veteris “old” –old, aged, that has been in long use)

veterinarian –>  veter  +  in  +  ary i +  an                        

  • “The entry in etymonline notes that <veterinarian> is an animal doctor, from Latin veterinarius “of or having to do with beasts of burden” , also, as a noun, “cattle doctor,” from veterinum “beast of burden,” perhaps from vetus (generative veteris) “old” , possibly from the notion of “old, experienced” …”

William and I had just enough time to discuss the suffixing rule of how a <y> can change to an <i> when adding a vowel suffix before it was time for him to go back to class.  The really amazing thing about this day was not only seeing a student proudly supporting the Veterans of this country, but also his enjoyment of connecting words and meanings.  He loves finding links to words and asks about them often.

 

I do believe a light has been ignited in this brilliant young mind!