Word Study Looks Different!

I love word study, and I would teach it all day if I could - oh wait I do teach word study all day!  This seems like an oxymoron but it isn't.  With our new program, I continue to focus in on how to weave word study throughout my day.  We are required to teach a short mini lessons daily 10-15 min.  I have not achieved that time yet typically I am way over, still focusing on that time element.  Here is what I have learned so far about word study (WS)  from our first 8 weeks of school.  I have a lot to learn!!

First I learned something new-totally new-light bulb moment new!  I decided to start the year with focusing on prefixes, base words, and suffixes.  I chose those indicators so that I could easily connect 4th grade WS to this year's WS.  Silly me I thought that would make the beginning lessons easier. My students had a pretty good understanding of these concepts until last week. Our focus was on prefix:  dis, di, dif.   This is where my learning started.  Thank goodness I prepared for this lesson because I had a lot to learn.  As I looked at the focus lesson, some the words included: distribute, dislocated, dispose, differ, direct, disturbance.   I felt comfortable with dislocated-I got it. However, the other words in this list-wow!  I will pause here if you would like to think about the base words or base meaning?

As I studied about the Greek and Latin bases I had to make a decision how do I shift my students thinking?  This was a difficult conversation but the thinking was huge.  Many students commented that it was fun to look for those parts of the word and then collect other words with the same base.  For example,  disturbance.  "turb" means shake or agitate so we discussed words like turbulence in plane or even a turbine engine.  The connections really started to happen and I was thrilled to see their light bulbs go off.

On a side note, I know you like to see our anchor charts well l need to start remembering that my anchor charts might be published so  apologies for the messy thinking.

This is our first lesson: Word Observation. We had a huge conversation about syllable boxes.

HW: students collected words in their WS spiral and then chose their favorite word and used it in a sentence.

Assessment: students wrote sentences showing meaning. Extra stars were BIG words from previous WS lessons