Etymology, which is the study of the historical word orgins and their meanings, is a powerful tool for improving vocabulary.
October 2017
I'm so pleased to announce the coming availability of two new LEX products. The first is the long-awaited first volume of InSight Words, the first of s ...
No such thing as sight words? How can that be? Learn how words are connected and why understanding that connection can make all the difference.
Mindful Teaching of Reading and Spelling: Four Facts and One Educated Opinion
When sounding it out doesn’t work, curiosity can.
How does English spelling work? It’s complex but completely regular and understandable. This isn’t what you normally hear about spelling, but it’s true. Here are some facts about English spelling: …
Rhyming can be so much fun when you try one of these Rhyming Activities for Kindergarten. You'll find over 10 hands-on literacy activities for kids.
There are so many things I love about my job, from working with my wonderful students each day to learning from my blogging colleagues to organizing my classroom (you know I love that, right?). But on
YES!...recently I had the wonderful opportunity to guide a group of inspiring, enthusiastic 4 and 5 year old learners. Together, we embarked on an incredible journey of 'digging' into the depths of the English language. Here is an account of our learning journey and our amazing discoveries! Our inquiry: Words belong in families, connected by meaning and spelling. Teaching strategies: 1. 'Concept attainment'- learners make their own learning discoveries. Usually presented as a Venn Diagram. Prior: identify what needs to be discovered. During: learners think independently/to self about concept. After: learners reveal the reason why these words are connected. 2. Think/pair/share- all learners are actively involved. Used frequently throughout the lesson in different formats and ways. Prior to embarking on our journey, I likened words to people families and demonstrated how members of my family were linked: 'people live in families so do words'. We illustrated this idea, discussed how families are different/similar and how families are connected. First stop! Choose a starter base from the 'word bag' (play) (a familiar base that young children can easily relate to). We discussed the meaning individually, in pairs and with the whole group. Next stop! Delving into the word bag...Does this word (playing) belong to the family of (play)? Think/whisper to your partner/let's share ideas with the group. Moving on! More words to pull out of the bag...Do they belong or not? How do we know? (I also included a few other words (painted) (painting) that did not belong to the family of (play). These words were used to start another word family, created the following day. And finally: Identifying the reason why these words belong in the family of (play); creating a word family chart; illustrating our understanding and then sharing our learning!
Build phonological awareness during your construction unit with these construction theme activities for children.
Examples of the tools we use in orthographic inquiry: word sorts, word webs, word sums, matrices, and flowcharts are shown.
Use these 8 effective compound word activities to help your students easily master this concept. They are engaging for students and simple to implement.
Sometime during the semester, having read too many sentences in ESL student compositions like “My brother is very success,” it occurs to the ESL instructor that banging her head
Use these 8 effective compound word activities to help your students easily master this concept. They are engaging for students and simple to implement.
One of the concepts that you will hear over and over in the literacy world is the notion that “print represents speech,” and that the only research-based approach to teaching reading and spelling i…
The FLOSS rule is a spelling generalization used to teach students when the final consonant is doubled. Check out tips for teaching it!
When sounding it out doesn’t work, curiosity can.
When a suffix is fixed to a base, why do some bases make a change but others do not? How can we identify which suffixes cause a change to the base? These questions, and many others, begin to quickly emerge when students are exposed and introduced to the underlying structure of words, through the morphological word sum. Even young children begin to critically observe and then question why sometimes there is a change and other times there is not a change to the base. Here is a suffixing activity that demonstrates the importance of the vowel suffixes. To begin the learning journey, the students perform a 'suffix hunt'. If I am planning this activity with young children, I prepare a selection of known big books and class texts for the students to search through. The students identify an appropriate word in a big book, or other appropriate text/literature. To provide proof of the suffix the children write the word sum to demonstrate the different morphemes, focusing on meaning. For example: hope/ + ing --> hoping love + ly --> lovely Further proof can involve thinking of other words that might also have this same suffix. From my experience, initially young children will often choose words like because they immediately identify the as a possible suffix. This is a perfect opportunity to question the students and model the process of identifying the morphemes: the base and suffix. If a child's theory is ; Can be the base if is the suffix? Does have meaning? Teacher questioning to guide, rather than to direct, helps learners to refine and reevaluate their thinking, in a learning environment where mistakes are valued and considered part of the learning process. Initially, young students may not show the changes to a base within the word sum. The very nature of this activity provides the opportunity to give immediate feedback and assess student growth and understanding of orthographic concepts. Once proven, the suffixes are then written on separate cards, in readiness for the suffix sorting activity. The Suffix Sorting Activity-concept attainment. You have probably noticed that I regularly use the concept attainment strategy (based on Jerome Bruner's work, 1977) to guide children through an inquiry process, to their own understanding of a learning concept. This strategy ensures all the students are critically thinking and actively involved by taking ownership of their proposals and theories; it allows all learners a critical thinking 'voice' and a deeper understanding of the concept introduced or revisited. The challenge is to develop, analyse and identify the attributes of the suffixing concept. Begin by telling the children that the collected suffixes will be sorted into two groups, either on the left hand side column, or the right hand column...the students' task is to think about why and how the suffixes are sorted in the two columns. "What is my thinking?" "Develop your own theories and ideas, but keep them 'secret' for now!" Initially, the children choose a suffix and the teacher directs them where to place it, reminding the children to start developing a theory. After 4/5 suffixes have been placed on the chart, the students give an indication if they are beginning to formulate some ideas about the suffixing concept. In addition, during the game, the students are given the opportunity to place a chosen suffix on the chart, based on their developing conceptual understanding. The teacher can either give immediate feedback and/or there can be a group discussion about the decision. As a result of this discussion and feedback, the students may need to reconsider their initial theory. At the end of the game the teacher provides some additional suffixes for sorting, to help students test their theory. The students are then required to write their theory/ideas on a 'post it note', ready to share with a classmate. This step supports students who have not fully grasped the sorting idea and need additional scaffolding and support from peers or teacher. Finally, the group works together to develop a collective statement, revealing the suffixing concept: Suffixes that start with a vowel letter and suffixes that start with a consonant letter. Add the suffix headings to the suffix chart. When working with young children I usually introduce the vowel suffixes as 'interesting', with double thumbs up, and 'boring' suffixes, with double thumbs down. This initial understanding then leads to the next conceptual suffixing understanding: Suffixes that start with a vowel letter may force a change to the base, while consonant suffixes do not make any changes to the base. A work in progress suffix chart: Initially the chart can have as many suffixes as needed; additional suffixes can be added to the chart as they are discovered and investigated by the students. Depending on age, the students create their own individual chart in workbooks or collectively with a partner or in small groups. To revisit and consolidate learning, the students, individually or collectively, build words using either vowel or consonant suffixes. Hopefully this will lead the students to discover and question why sometimes there is a change to the base. The next investigation can focus more explicitly on 'why vowel suffixes and consonant suffixes?' through a structured word inquiry process. Please contact me through the comments section or through this link if you would like to continue this conversation about structured word inquiry in the early years.
The primary function of English spelling is to represent MEANING. Implementing orthography, through scientific inquiry, in the early years. As I continue on my learning journey, and work with young children in a variety of learning settings, it is consistently validated that teaching morphology to the youngest is not only essential but critical to their success as proficient language users. As we know and understand from research, morphology is the building block, the solid foundation, for understanding how the English spelling system works. It provides a meaningful structure for teaching and learning phonology in an effective and authentic way. In this post, I would like to share a wonderful learning story of a group of young children who are currently embarking on a journey of orthographic understanding. This structured word inquiry was explicitly embedded in an authentic literacy learning experience, integrating all forms of language. Throughout the learning experience the children clearly demonstrated their deep understanding of how words are connected in meaning and structure. We started this particular learning journey by rereading a well loved story, Mrs Wishy Washy by Joy Cowley.The children were delighted to read the story to me, which they did with great enthusiasm and understanding.They clearly viewed themselves as proficient readers, by explaining and discussing the underlying ideas and meaning of the story. I shared my favourite part of the story, by writing a sentence to demonstrate and model my thought processes, emphasising the word . Hence, the starter base for this investigation is . The cow jumped in the mud. I have also observed a teacher of another prep class require the children to draw their thinking about the starter base before embarking on the word family activity. A very valuable, authentic assessment of children's understanding and learning! Concept attainment: We then dived into the 'bag of words' and pulled out the word , written on a large chart. jumped "Jumped," shouted the children with glee. By ensuring the children had meaningfully encountered this word in a reading and writing context all the children were able to make true sense of the word. I modelled how to announce the spelling of by spelling aloud the single letter graphemes and the suffix. This word was placed inside a hoop. The children orally shared their understanding of the meaning of the word through their own life experiences. The bag of words also contained as well as two others and . We then proceeded to pull out further words making decisions together if the word belonged inside the hoop or outside the hoop. Each time we viewed a word I announced the morphemes and graphemes. In pairs, the children discussed the words inside the hoop and then shared their hypotheses of why and belonged to the same morphological word family but and did not. The children did this with exceptional focus and interest. The children recorded their thinking by illustrating the meaning of the words in the hoop. As the children were writing their chosen word, this created further opportunities to model the spelling out strategy. After recording their thinking the children created a word web to record how the words are linked in meaning and structure. Again I announced the morphemes and graphemes, reinforcing new terminology and concepts. The children decided they needed to construct additional word webs for and and I have no doubt that they could accomplish this effectively through a similar inquiry investigation. Every time I share this activity with children it confirms, consolidates and ratifies the utmost importance of implementing morphology in the early years. Right from the very beginning young children need to fully understand that the primary function of English spelling is meaning. Now, let's think about the phonological connections that are explicitly embedded in this activity. During this particular SWI lesson the children are consistently revisiting and consolidating the names of 4 alphabet letters and They are implicitly introduced to four single letter graphemes and the phonemes these graphemes are representing in the base word /dʒ/ /u/ /m/ /p/ In the following weeks you could choose another starter base, like and highlight the circumstances of the single letter grapheme in this base word and compare it to the circumstance of the single letter grapheme in . The children can investigate and discuss if represents the same or a different phoneme when the is in the initial and final positions of these two base words. presents a meaningful introduction to the digraph , a team of letters working together to represent the phoneme long /a/, in the final position. Additionally, this would naturally lead into an introduction of the six vowel letters, and an investigation, of the importance of these letters in understanding the spelling of a base. Please refer to the blog post The Power of Kinaesthetic Learning for further information regarding the teaching of vowels. In just one lesson the children have been meaningfully introduced to a variety of important morphological and phonological concepts and terminology.
