Understanding Etymology/History Sparks the Teacher in a Student

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.

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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!

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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!!

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!