Word Nerds: Chapter 7

Y'all, we are almost at the end of this wonderful book! Just in time for me to go back into my classroom and get some things done. 

Chapter 7 is all about Spreading Vocabulary Wings. I really liked the section on morphology study. Last year, my upper class didn't have a spelling list. Instead, they had 10 morphology words that we would study for 2 weeks then have an assessment over them. This worked really well and the students really learned the meanings of some of these prefixes, suffixes, and roots. I would hear them using what they knew about the parts of words to decode the meaning of other words... it was great! But in reality, they didn't need to know all of the parts we studied because it was a lot! Over the summer, all the 5th grade ELA teachers in my county came together and chose morphology words that we felt our students needed to know. This list is are the words I'm going to focus on this year. There are no more than 10 for each quarter. This will save me a *HUGE* amount of time.

As you can imagine, I was overly excited about the Crystal Ball Words in chapter 7. I loved the layout of the graphic organizer and how they can discover new words from a single prefix, suffix, or root word. It's such a powerful way to look at morphology. I plan on using this format but of course I'm going to cutesy it up a bit!

This chapter is on my favorites list because it goes on to give year another graphic organizer that can be used for inferring the meaning of vocabulary. It's organized by Clues from the Text//What I already Know//My Inference or Conclusion. This is similar to what I have used in the past when we are talking about drawing conclusions.

What are some activities you use in your own classroom to help teach vocabulary in context and morphology? I'd love to hear about them!