Greek or Latin Oh My?

Several years ago our 5th grade word study program began to focus on Greek and Latin roots to help encourage our students to think about words differently but more importantly begin to break words into small parts for understanding.  This is where my journey started with small baby steps including several anchor charts and learning along with the students. 

I just introduced our first two: aqua and hydro to my class this week, (Shh don't tell anyone I am sure I am not on the correct district timeline) but my students weren't ready yet for such higher level thinking.  I used a keynote for my introductory lesson and most students knew they both meant "water" but when I put the above image in my presentation none of them knew the name of it. Not a big deal but an opportunity for great learning to occur.

The next slide had the word: aqueduct on it.  With questions: What do you recognize about this word?  Where have you seen this word?  After that conversation, I showed them this video clip about aqueducts.  I learned an important lesson that day about Greek and Latin roots.  Students need to understand the connections with history along with understanding how so many words are interconnected. 

My goal with all word study lessons is inquiry and allowing my students time for exploration. I had opened the door to a new word learning, and the students left that day ready to explore.  Two days later, using our digital camera students shared their new words and the conversations were amazing.  I didn't know...  Did you realize.... I have the noun you have the same word used as an adjective.... What is that again?  I never heard of that word (that was said from their teacher). Here are 3 index cards with their new learning. We're on our way......

Wonderful Word Wednesday: Greek and Latin Prefix & Suffixes

For the past three weeks on Wonderful Word Wednesday, our class has teleported back in time to become Cryptokids. Cryptomania is one of the best mentor texts that I have ever used. It is student friendly and has amazing illustrations and excellent text examples that support the meanings. I have struggled for a long time on teaching Greek and Latin prefixes and suffixes.  I knew how to teach it but I never saw the transfer of the skills to my student's writing or vocabulary. Last year, our team ordered multiple copies of this book, so I was ready to have fun this year being teleported back in time.

Organized chaos while working on posters.

I introduced the book by setting the stage that our class was going to be teleported back to ancient Greece. This was very exciting for the kids as well as creating some curiosity about the time frame. The next thing I did was have each student adopt a Greek or Latin prefix or suffix by pulling a slip of paper out of the hat.  These corresponded to examples that would be found in the book. Each student spent a week of secrecy researching and learning about their new prefix or suffix. 

Working hard on their poster

The following Wednesday, we did the great reveal which was really fun because the students did not know that I had duplicated the slips of paper, so each student said their prefix/suffix I would hear "I have that one too."  After each student found their partner, we created a class rubric for designing their posters. This was interesting because they had such a wide variety of research that they wanted to include  much higher level
information than I thought of originally.

I love the pop up little book.

The following Wednesday the students finished their posters, and they presented them to the class.  This was exciting because this is when all the connections and light bulb moments happened during their presentations.
 
*Many of the prefixes and suffixes could be combined to make new words and until the students saw all the posters they did not realize this.
*Some of the students were able to create new words that they didn't think about prior to the presentations.
*As a class, the students decided they wanted to search for these prefix/suffixes in their JR books or even text books. I agreed to xerox the page and we would add the new words.  

This is where I think the connections will occur with the student's writing as well as expanding their vocabulary. Time to be teleported back to Ohio-it was a successful journey!