Helping Each Other To Help Our Kiddos

As promised, for this Friday's Favorite Find post, we will be doing one of my favorite things!  Considering that "Testing Season" is either newly here or right around the corner for many of us, we all know that the pressure's on - for us and for our students.  If there are ways that we can making preparing for our assessments a little more enjoyable, and therein make taking the tests a bit less stressful, let's share the love!

To start lending a helping hand, I am making everything available in my TpT and TN stores for 20% off  - and making my Common ELA Vocabulary Review Game Pack FREE in my TpT Store from now through this Monday, April 1st (No April Fool's joking going on here...I swear. Lol)!

**What Customers Are Saying**

"Useful tool."

"Another homerun!  Thank you!  I've also subscribed to your blog!  Great stuff!!!"

"Thanks for creating these fun and educational materials!"

Grab it for free while you can!

Please be sure to look around, grab a FREEBIE or two - and share with your colleagues, too!

For the following linky, create a blog post that shares an idea or tip that you've used or found that can help with content review or test taking strategies.  Are there things that you or your school district do to remove anxiety and motivate kids to try their best?  How do you use technology in your classroom to help prepare? Have you created products that make preparing for state assessments more enjoyable - games, activites, strategies and suggestions for home?  A free product, to start, would be awesome...then feel free to add links to a paid product or two as well.  Anything you are ready and willing to share will be greatly appreciated!

This Favorite Find Linky will start a little later this afternoon and be available to link to through April 6th, 2013 - so be sure to come back with a post that shares lots of helpful resources.  Then, look around for some new ideas to take back to your classroom!

To Link-up:

-Grab my Middle School Matters Blog graphic below to place in your blog.

(Please be sure to then attach a link back to this blog post using the above image.)

-Link up your post! :)

I can't wait to see all of the Favorite Finds we can share!  Thank you for trying this out with me.  I would truly love any feedback or suggestions for this Linky in the comments below.

New Puzzle for Suffixes

A few weeks ago I wrote a post titled Puzzle Me This...Prefixes that had some great response.  Many people asked if I would be making any more 12 Square Puzzles, and in fact, I have!  I have now combined the prefix puzzle with one for suffixes (for a total of two separate puzzles) and have them available for free in both of Teachers Pay Teachers and Teacher's Notebook stores.

Click here to download:

TpT

OR

TN

Hoping you like them! :)

7 Reasons Why the Teaching of Roots and Affixes Is a Middle School Matter

In the 14 years that I've been teaching, I've seen a real shift in the philosophy of English Education.  When I started, whole language was the focus of all reading and writing instruction.  Quite honestly, this was a shock to me since, as a student in a very small K-12 school in upstate New York, I only knew traditional methodology.  My English classes were filled with diagramming sentences, memorizing the forms of the verb "to be," and studying vocabulary - including root words and affixes.  That being said, as you can imagine, seeing my own students read and write just for the love of reading and writing...not concentrating on the number of complex sentences versus compound-complex sentences in a passage, was exciting!  I loved it!  My students loved it...ELA was fun!  

But...the question of whether or not it was wise for the pendulum to swing so far to one side and seemingly abandon the systematic teaching of grammar, conventions and vocabulary - specifically Greek and Latin roots and affixes - now arises. Is there something to be said for the shift to a "back to basics" approach that the Common Core Standards require?  When looking carefully at the CCSS and researching the benefits of learning and internalizing the basic building blocks of language, to me the answer is a resounding, "Yes!"  The interesting thing I found is that the CCSS vocabulary standards pertaining to Greek and Latin affixes and roots begin at 4^th Grade and end at 8^th Grade.  Here's some of what I've found and why I think this is so:

1. Quite simply, let's start with knowing the parts helps our students to understand the whole.   Knowing commonly used roots and affixes can help students infer the definitions of new words in context.

2. The ability to infer meaning: Knowing Greek and Latin word parts helps students recognize and gain clues to understanding of other words that use known affixes and roots (Nagy & Scott, 2000).

3.  Over 60% of the words students will encounter in school textbooks have recognizable word parts; and many of these Latin and Greek roots (Nagy, Anderson, Schommer, Scott, & Stallman, 1989).  This means that word study can helps students' comprehension in all content areas.

4.   Recent reading research has supported the morphological approach to vocabulary development in elementary and middle school.  In linguistics, this practice of identifying and analyzing the parts of words in a given language is helpful in its acquisition.

5. Content area vocabulary is largely Greek and Latin-based and research supports this instruction, especially for struggling readers (Harmon, Hedrick & Wood, 2005).

6. Knowing commonly used suffixes can help students identify a word's part of speech, further helping with correct usage in writing.

7. Lastly, standardized tests assess students' vocabulary.  Whether we like it or not, state testing seems to be here to stay.  That being said, giving our students the tools necessary to be successful can turn what is often a stressful situation for many into an opportunity to confidently show what they know.

In doing some research to answer my own questions for this post, I also found a very well-written and thorough research summary on the topic created by the National Middle School Association.  In it you will find a great deal of research that not only supports the instruction of vocabulary in language development, but the need for word study at the middle school level.

So, with all of this said, we now need to examine how.  How do we meet the needs of our students without swinging the pendulum all the way back in the other direction...forsaking student-centered instruction for skill and drill?  I think balance is the key.  Direct instruction of vocabulary is a place to start, but time should be given for students to explore and analyze word parts in small groups or learning centers and on their own.  This gradual release of responsibility approach - which we know so well in the instruction of reading - pertains to vocabulary as well.  

In an effort to help you find materials that can help with organizing cooperative learning opportunities for word study, I'm also including a link to my Content Areas Roots, Prefixes and Suffixes - which includes a PowerPoint for reviewing word parts and their roles in language.  

CCR and CCSS aligned for ELA 5 - 8

 

It includes charts and Memory Match cards for roots in ELA, Math, Science and Social Studies as well as for commonly used prefixes and suffixes. My Student Accountability Form and my My Vocabulary Keeps Growing graphic organizer are also included.

Please feel free to click HERE  if you would like more details.

In providing links to some of the free materials I've created for vocabulary, and following the post I wrote for Common Core Classrooms, I've received some great feedback, and questions as to the whys and hows have been asked.  I'm hoping that I've given you some more information, places to look for additional answers, and have offered some resources that may be helpful.  Are you teaching roots, prefixes and suffixes in your classroom? If you have fun ways that you have had your students review or practice...please consider sharing more in the comments below.  The more insight and resources we can gather, the better!

Harmon, J., Hedrick, W., Wood, K. (2005).  Research on vocabulary instruction in the 
Content areas:  Implication for struggling readers.  Reading & Writing Quarterly, 21, 
261-280. 



Nagy, W.E., Anderson, R.C., Schommer, M., Scott, J.A., & Stallman, A.C. (1989). Morphological families in the internal lexicon. Reading Research Quarterly, 24(3), 262-282.


Nagy, W. E., & Scott, J. A. (2000). Vocabulary processes. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. III, pp. 269–284). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Puzzle Me This...Prefixes!

I'm SO happy to share my newest FREEBIE with you!  I so love games and puzzles.  I know that my students do, too.  The challenge of solving this puzzle certainly helps motivate students to learn the meanings of the commonly used prefixes that are featured in this 12 Square Puzzle:

(click on the image to download it here)

Simply print one copy to place in a folder for an answer key. Then, print and copy the puzzle (on cardstock, if possible).  Have students cut the pieces apart on the dotted lines and mix up them up. To play, have them match the prefixes to their definitions to put the puzzle together.  Ready, set, GO!  This is great on its own, but it would also be a great addition to my Content Area Roots, Prefixes and Suffixes PowerPoint and Center Activities.  This pack also contains a chart of prefixes that are used in this puzzle.  Feel free to stop by TpT or TN to take a closer look.  The pack is 20% off today (1/21/2013) at both stores!

I hope you find this FREEBIE useful.  I'm linking this post to Classroom Freebies' Manic Monday for January 21st.  Be sure to click on the link and check out all of the great resources available to you!

Have a great day!!

Trick or Treat

New Halloween themed product :

When looking at the ELA Common Core State Standards, regardless of the specific grade level, it is easy to see that the ability for students to understand some key words and concepts that are the foundation of the expectations of the CCSS would be extremely helpful.  I have pulled 28 terms from the standards that are common across 5^th through 8^th grade and created a study sheet that can be given to each child.  It is foldable so that children can quiz themselves by hiding the term or the definition  - just like flashcards, but on 1 piece of paper, rather than 28 separate cards for them to lose. (I Middle School!)

Next, I have created a review game called TRICK OR TREAT.  The setup and game play are both very simple, but the element of surprise makes this game one your students will want to play again and again!

Click {HERE} to visit my online store and get a closer look at this fun way to review the vocabulary that is necessary for our students to be successful with the Common Core.