“Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.” – Charlotte Whitton

Yesterday was one of those days when the orthographic sun was shining brightly.  I was bathed in the light, and that light warmed me from the inside out.

It all started when a teacher on our fifth grade team said she was talking about suffrage with her class, and one of the students wondered out loud if the word suffrage was related to suffer in any way since they had so many letters in common.
(Yes!  Trying to make sense of unfamiliar words by looking for relationships to known words.)

A bit later, another teacher who works with one of my students asked me to follow her to her room.  She had something to show me.  The student had read a story about someone who was a philanthropist, and when the teacher drew attention to that unfamiliar word, the student began writing a word sum.  The teacher wasn’t sure how to respond to the word sum and called me in.  Here is what the student wrote:  <phil> + <an> + <thr> + <o> + <pist>.

(Yes!  My students are aware that words are made up of morphemes, and they carry clues about their language of origin.)

Later that same day, a student ran across the word aquatic while doing some science research.  She wondered aloud if the <quat> in <aquatic> was the same <quat> we see in <quaternary> (we’ve been studying primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary consumers in a food web).  She also wondered about the <a>, and if it was the same <a> that we saw in <asexual> when we discussed living things reproducing.

(Yes!  Words are made up of morphemes and those morphemes are categorized as bases and affixes.  Some bases and affixes show up in a large number of words.  Research is the only way to know for sure whether two words share a base or an affix.)

So today when class began, I shared my joy with my students.  I wanted them to know that what pleased me more than anything was the fact that they were wondering and asking questions.  They were looking for connections and recognizing previously used affixes and bases.

I wrote <suffrage> on the board.  Below it I wrote <suffer>.  Then someone called out <suffix>, so I wrote that down also.  Because we had talked about <suffer> and <suffix> earlier this year, it was remembered that <suf-> (sub-) was the prefix in each of these words.  But that didn’t necessarily mean it was a prefix in <suffrage>.  We needed to do some research.  I pulled up Etymonline on the Smartboard and we looked it up together.

We found that it was from the Latin suffragari “lend support, vote for someone”.  The next bit was quite interesting.  [Conjectured to be a compound of sub “under” and fragor “crash, din, shouts (as of approval), related to frangere “to break”.  On another theory the second element is frangere itself and the notion is “use a broken piece of tile as a ballot”.  The meaning “political right to vote” in English is first found in the U.S. Constitution, 1787.]

The words “conjectured to be” and “on another theory” brought interesting discussion in and of themselves.  Both possibilities broaden the sense of the word.  For now we are satisfied that the <suf-> in <suffrage> might be a prefix just as it is in <suffix> and <suffer> … and then again it might not be.

The conversation we had about <philanthropist> took us meandering through several words.  I wrote the student’s word sum for it:  <phil> + <an> + <thr> + <o> + <pist>.   I said, ” Looks like this student is considering whether or not this word has an <o> connecting vowel.  What language would we associate with an <o> connecting vowel?”  Several students piped up with “Greek”.  Then I asked if there were any other clues in this word that it was in fact from Greek.  After a thoughtful pause several said <ph> at once.  Beautiful.  At this point I asked everyone to consider the word sum and whether or not they agreed that there was an <o> connecting vowel.

Right away someone pointed out that <ist> is a common suffix found in words like <scientist>, <artist> and <therapist>. So if the <ist> was indeed a suffix, then the <p> would not be by itself – that perhaps <throp> all go together.  At this point we went back to Etymonline.   We found evidence that <ist> was a suffix and that this word came from the Greek philanthropia “kindliness, humanity, benevolence, love to mankind” from phil- “loving” + anthropos “mankind”.  I shared with my students that when in college I had taken a course in anthropology.

With this information we created a new hypothesis:  <phil> + <anthrop> + <ist>.  We talked about what philanthropists do. I reminded them that a few years back our school was the recipient of a philanthropist’s generosity when someone purchased Smartboards for each of our classrooms!

But as we were finishing up that discussion, I wondered out loud if there were other words with <phil> as the base.  Immediately the word <philosophy> was mentioned.  We looked it up.  We found that it comes from the Greek philosophia “love of knowledge, pursuit of wisdom”.  How delightful!

Lastly we looked at <aquatic>.  When we looked at Etymonline, we could not find any evidence to support <a> being a prefix or <quat> having to do with fourth.  We only saw references to <aqua> meaning water.  Some students may have been able to guess that without having to look, but I want to develop the habit of looking.  There have been far too many unexpected connections (delightful surprises) when we have.

I leave you with a student/teacher exchange that happened later that day (inspired by our discussions):

“I’m thinking of the word <dinosaur> and thinking that if the <o> is a connecting vowel, then the word is probably from Greek.  What do you think?”

“I’m thinking that you know how to find out.” (said with a smile)

“Yup.” (said with an even bigger smile)

Focusing on Word Structure

As we were watching a video about the water cycle, I wrote the following words on the board:

condensation                  evaporation                         transpiration
infiltration                       percolation                          precipitation
interception                     evapotranspiration

What an orthographic opportunity!  The students were quick to recognize that everyone of these had an <ion> suffix.  Next I asked students to say and then spell the word that would remain if the <ion> suffix was removed.  The words listed were now:

condensate                     evaporate                            transpirate

infiltrate                         percolate                              precipitate

intercept                        evapotranspirate

With the exception of the word <intercept>, all the rest had something in common.  The students again pointed out an <ate> suffix.  I asked why the <e> on the end of <ate> didn’t show up once we added the <ion> suffix to the word?  Everyone knew that it was dropped when the vowel suffix <ion> was added.  At this point I recognized though, that some of the students thought the second suffix was <at> instead of <ate>.   In our recent “The Great Suffix Challenge” activity I learned that some of those same students have little understanding of suffixes, other than their position in the word.  We must keep writing out word sums and talking about each morpheme’s role in the word.

Next I asked if anyone recognized any proven prefixes.  Several recognized <inter>, meaning between and <pre>, meaning before.  Even though we had previously discussed <e> being a clip of <ex> (meaning out) and <con> (meaning together), no one recognized them offhand.    I grouped the students and had each group further investigate each word.

As the bases were identified, discussions took us in all sorts of fascinating directions.

The meaning of the word <evaporation> became something we could clearly picture once we knew that <e> was the prefix meaning out  and <vape> was the base meaning steam.  We pictured water evaporating from a tea kettle, a puddle, and a lake.  Our complete word sum hypothesis was <e> + <vape/> + <or> + <ate/> + <ion>.   When deciding whether the base was <vape> or <vapor>, we looked for other words sharing this meaning and found <vapid>.  This word was our evidence that <or> was a suffix.  We decided that without the final <e> on the base, the final consonant <p> would be forced to double when adding a vowel suffix.  Since we know that in words like vaporize and evaporate there is only a single <p>, then we also know there must be a final <e> on the base <vape>.  For those who were confused as to why the base might have a final <e>, I wrote <hoping> on the board and asked them to remove the <ing> suffix.  When they said the base was <hope>, I showed them that the final <e> in <hope> is doing the same job as the final <e> in the bound base <vape>.

Another intriguing discussion arose with the word <infiltration>.  The word sum hypothesis was <in> + <filtr> + <ate/> + <ion>.  As we typically do, we looked for other words that shared the base <filtr> and its meaning.  We found filtration, infiltrate, infiltrator, infiltrated, filter, filtering, filtered, and filters.  Much to my delight, someone asked how we could add an <er> suffix to the base <filtr> to get the word <filter>.  The student knew we wouldn’t just drop the final <r> in the base, but also knew that simply adding the <er> suffix wouldn’t get us the spelling of <filter> either.

The bound base <filtr> behaves similarly to <centr>, <metr>, and <theatr>.  Structurally it makes sense to spell these four with a final <re> rather than an <er>.  Let me give examples using word sums:

<filtr> + <ate/> + <ion> –> <filtration>
<centr> + <al> –> <central>     OR     <centr> + <i> + <fuge/> + <al>  –>  <centrifugal>
<metr> + <ic> –> <metric>       OR    <metr> + <o> + <nome>  –>  <metronome>
<theatr> + <ic> + <al>  –> <theatrical>

In other countries, these words are indeed spelled <filtre>, <centre>, <metre>, and <theatre>.  At some point in American history, the <re> ending was reversed so that these words resembled all of the other words in our language that have an <er> suffix.   Alas! In doing so, another road block to understanding word structure was set in place.  Center and central seemed to be two words that were related in meaning, but not in spelling or structure.  But, of course, that is not what scholarly research and evidence reveals!  My students are now as fascinated with this information as I am.

One final treasure was when we found the base of <transpiration> to be <spire> which means to breathe.  The students began collecting other words with that base and we talked about how each word shared that sense of breathing.  When we studied photosynthesis, we first used the word <transpiration>, and knew that it was that plant action of pulling water up from the roots, through the xylem, through the leaf into the cell and out the stomata.  In this way the plant is breathing.  When we came across the word <perspiration>, the light bulb of meaning connection went off in my own head and I said, “Transpiration.  Perspiration.  Anybody seeing any similarities in meaning?”  Eyes widened and hands shot up.   From there we talked about <respiration>, <inspiration> and <expiration>.  THIS is the stuff you don’t find in spelling workbooks!

 

Like Biosphere, Biology, And Biotic, Orthography Breathes Life Into Our Studies!

In our recent investigation of the word <biosphere> we found that the most likely hypothesis is <bi> + <o> + <sphere>.  The base <bi> is from the Greek bios meaning life.  In searching for some other words that share this same base students found:

biography
biographical
autobiography
biology
symbiosis
biotic

The word biotic was an unfamiliar one until we added the prefix <anti> to it.  When I asked if anyone had ever taken an antibiotic, almost all hands went up.  With the shared understanding that an antibiotic was a medicine, we could talk about the word’s denotation or literal definition.  The prefix <anti> means against and the base <bi> means life.  An antibiotic is against (destructive to) micro-organisms (living organisms) in the body.

The word biotic took on another meaning last week when we went to the creek to see what kinds of macroinvertebrates live there.  Our task was to use the Biotic Index to determine the quality of the water.  The students each had a tally sheet that listed the types of macroinvertebrates we might find.  On the tally sheet, the macroinvertebrates were grouped by how sensitive or tolerant each was to pollution.

Two students from each class wore waders and got in the water with me.  We demonstrated how scientists take kick samples using a D frame net.  Then the samples were carried to the waiting white pans.  The rest of the class spent time examining the macroinvertebrates in the pans and marking down the types and numbers of macroinvertebrates they found.  The calculations would come later when we returned to the class.  In the meantime, we were looking at the insects living in the creek (biotic) knowing that their numbers and sensitivity to pollution would be what would determine the water’s quality.

Here are some pictures from our trip to the creek.

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And the Beat Goes On……

I live in a small village where it’s not at all unusual to run into my students outside of school.  In fact, I like when it happens!  It was just this past Monday that I walked downtown to run an errand.  On my way back home I stopped on the bridge to watch the creek.  A boy on a bike stopped alongside me.  I caught the big smile of recognition on his face just before he spoke.  Sam was as happy to run into me as I was to run into him!

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Sam stood with me looking at the water and the exposed roots of a rather large old tree on the bank of the creek.  After a bit he said, “Logan and I came over to your house about a week ago and knocked on your door, but you weren’t home.”

Of course I was very curious.  “I’m sorry I wasn’t home.  Was there something you wanted?”

“Well, we both had questions about some words we’ve been thinking about.”

I couldn’t keep the smile from forming.  Sam proceeded to share his curiosities about the product known as ‘Orajel’.  Since it is primarily used in and around the mouth, he thought <ora> might mean teeth.  I was impressed that he was obviously looking at the word’s structure and thinking about meaning!  We talked a bit about how companies, when naming new products, sometimes create product names by combining two or more words.  In this case, perhaps the two words are <oral> and <gel>.  The word <oral> has to do with the mouth, so this hypothesis makes sense.

After a bit more discussing, I couldn’t help but wonder what Logan was going to ask about.  It seems that Logan has been thinking about <able>.  He knows it can be a free base, but he has also noticed it used as a suffix.  Sam and I talked as we walked in the direction of his house.  At the end of the next block, he got on his bike and zipped off so he wouldn’t be late getting home.

And the beat goes on….  THIS is what studying orthography does to a person!  My students and I now possess a curiosity about words that enriches what we read, what we write, and what we spend our time thinking about!  Imagine how wonderful it feels to have these impromptu word discussions outside of the school year.   The great news is that this is the fourth such discussion I’ve had this summer with various students!  In the 19 years I’ve been teaching and living here, I never once had a student stop me in the middle of summer to talk to me about <i> before <e>, syllables, or even phonics.  Wonder why? Blech!  That’s why!

I want to savor what’s left of my summer, but I have to say that I’m starting to look forward to the new school year and a new group of fifth graders.  And the beat goes on….

Why Study Orthography?

I have been reflecting on my previous post and the great comments I received on that post from people I admire and respect.  In an email to these same friends, I described my students and me as on “a road less traveled”.  It seemed fitting to borrow a line from Robert Frost’s poem, since it was a poem whose idea surfaced and resurfaced in our room all year.  Picture it like I do.  In the line  “two roads diverged in a yellow wood”, the wood symbolizes public schools. One of the roads represents traditional spelling instruction and the other orthography.  I’ve been on “the road less traveled” for a year and a half now.  And choosing this road really and truly has made all the difference.

When watching the videos from this year and last, it has been soul-satisfying to hear how studying orthography has made my students feel.   As Dan Allen says (in the comments of the previous post), it IS about language and spelling, and yet it is about so much more.  My students loved getting so involved in the search.  The more they learned about searching and what they were seeing, the more fun it was to set forth.

By the end of the year, students eagerly began investigations on their own and planned out presentation posters in all sizes.  Finding unfamiliar words in their personal reading was no longer a thing to be ignored.  Those were the words that they wrote word sum hypotheses about.  Those were the words they chose to investigate.  Those were the words that brought images and life to the story because they now carried meaning.

Questioning each other became an everyday activity, and no one was threatened by it.  It was freeing for all of us to realize that we weren’t searching for that one right answer, but rather an answer built on our research, our knowledge of the rules of English, and our logical thinking.  As we learned bits about Greek and Latin, they too were incorporated with glee!  Every bit of new information was welcomed because it helped us make sense of a subject that never made sense before.  No matter how hard we all worked at it, traditional spelling instruction only ever taught us to memorize one word at a time, 20 words a week, 360 words a school year.  But success was only for the few who could memorize well.  And let’s face it.  That is not the majority of students.

Does this mean students in my class never misspell words?  Of course not.  It means, though, that they can have a conversation about whether or not the consonant before the suffix should or should not be doubled.  They can have a conversation about what the prefix is and how it modifies the meaning of the base.  They can make a hypothesis about what the word sum might be, and they can defend that hypothesis.  They can have a conversation about pulling off suffixes and whether or not the base has a final ‘e’.  They spell out bases, prefixes, and suffixes because they know that none of these has a pronunciation until it surfaces in a word.  They can use resources (online and hard copy) independently to back up their investigation findings.  They can question their classmates with an air of genuine curiosity, earnestly seeking to make sense of new information and incorporate it into current understandings.

Since we’ve dropped traditional spelling instruction and become orthographers, we expect spelling to make sense.  This basic premise intrigues us.  We are ecstatic that we can silence the voices of our pasts that say, “sound it out”,  “just memorize it”, or  “nobody knows why”.  We feel like we are cracking unsolved cases wide open!  We feel joy and satisfaction and pride in what we know!

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Why We Love Orthography!

Today I asked my students to brainstorm things they have learned this year while investigating words.  When it was time to share, I was impressed with their honest responses and their sincere smiles.  Just listen to the first boy as he shares his favorite word from the year … a word he will understand and appreciate all his life.  His proud smile as he finishes sharing the word sum says it all.  When he was done, someone mentioned that the base <phot> is probably <phote>.   Yes, I thought.  But did you see the confidence and pride as he mentioned the connecting vowel <o>?

Further into the video, a girl mentions that she was interested in the prefix <cide> which means kill.  As she finished her comments, a wonderful conversation sprouted.  Someone recognized that <cide> is really a base.  Someone else asked about the word <suicide> and wondered if the prefix was <sui>.  Then other words were thrown out like herbicide, pesticide and homocide.  With each word, students offered definitions as the word related to ‘kill’.  As word scientists, it is never a big deal to make a mistake.  Mistakes are like springboards for fascinating discussions!  They are an opportunity to clarify thinking.  My classroom has become a safe place to question each other without seeming critical.

My favorite comment is the last one.  I think it is beautifully put!

 

Jazzing Up the Hallway With Latin!

Amid lots of year-end projects and activities, we’ve continued to share our Latin verb investigations with each other.  To keep the conversations regarding these findings going, we have then posted them in the hallway!  Every day we walk by these posters at least six times … and so do a lot of other people!  When reviewing the Latin bases on the posters, students continually  suggest words that might be added to the webs of these word families.  What a great thing it is for all of us to realize just how big some of these word families are!  Common and familiar words become the object of examination in the same wondrously curious and joyful manner as unfamiliar yet intriguing words.

We have also developed a great habit of doing some “so far” sharing.  Instead of always waiting until the presentation preparations are completed, we have been asking people to share their half finished posters so they can talk about what they have discovered “so far”.  In this way, the rich discussion and questions of classmates has often given the presenters the opportunity to reflect on their work, and in some cases make changes before they finalize their posters.

DSCN4278 DSCN4279 DSCN4280 DSCN4281 DSCN4282 DSCN4283Investigating in this manner (beginning with Latin verbs), the students have enjoyed finding out for themselves if the infinitive and the supine reveal a unitary base or a twin base.  Prior to the spellinar I’m taking on Latin for Orthographers, we often wondered about whether or not a base had a twin.  Now it feels so exhilarating to have a deeper understanding of what we are looking at when we read entries in dictionaries  or on Etymonline.

 

If You Could Choose Any Word to Investigate ….

The other day we read Skot Caldwell’s blog.  His 4th and 5th grade students had been on an investigation similar to one we had been on  —  that of collecting evidence to prove whether or not <tion> and/or <sion> were suffixes.  His students worked in partners, each investigating a word that had either <tion> or <sion> as the last four letters.

Neither of our classes could find a word in which <tion> or <sion> was the suffix.  Until we do, we must rely on the data we have collected.  And the data that Mr. Caldwell’s class and our class has gathered suggests that <tion> and <sion> are syllables and NOT suffixes.  In every case investigated we found the suffix to be <ion>.

We decided to create the following video to share with others what we have learned about the <tion> and <sion> suffixes.  It is presented as a game show.  Prepare to be entertained and educated!

In presenting their findings, Mr. Caldwell’s students created some colorful and interesting posters.  My students enjoyed them and are looking to create similar ones with the investigations we started today.  One might consider what we did today similar to a “free day” in art.  Students could work alone or in pairs and could choose any word they wanted to investigate!  It was a charged environment!  Several students ran over to the “Wonder Wall” (where students list words they wonder about but don’t have time to investigate) to choose a word.  Others had words in mind.  I don’t remember all of the words investigated today, but a few of them were platypus, hallelujah, containment, yesterday, forensic, and sycophant.  We’re hoping to conclude these investigations tomorrow and to begin posters similar to those in Mr. Caldwell’s class.

 

‘UGH’ Can You Hear Me Now?

Over the break I was reading some student writing, and I came upon the word ‘tho’.   It seemed like the perfect opportunity to talk about the <ugh> trigraph .  We began by looking at the word <laugh> and identifying the phonemes in this word.  When we looked closely at the letter/phoneme correspondences, the students realized that in the word <laugh>, the  <ugh> trigraph represents /f/.  Then we looked at the word <though>.  When we examined it in the same way, the students realized that in the word <though>, the <ugh> trigraph doesn’t represent a sound at all!

Then I asked the class to make two columns on their paper.  In one column they were to list as many words as they could in which the <ugh> trigraph represented /f/.  In the second column they were to list as many words as they could in which the <ugh> trigraph did not represent a sound at all.  After a bit of independent work time, I asked students to come to the board and write the words they were finding.

This was such a fun activity!  The words on the list in which the <ugh> trigraph did not represent a sound were a source for fascinating discussions. At first we didn’t recognize the word <snowplough>.  Jacob went to the Collins-Gage Dictionary and found that it was an alternate spelling to <snowplow> which we are much more familiar with.  The same thing happened when students found the word <hiccough>.  This time they recognized that an alternate (more familiar spelling) would be <hiccup>.    Many students did not recognize the word <bough> until I read it aloud.  When I talked about decorating with boughs of holly, then the room was filled with, “Ohhh.  Yes.  I know that word.”  The same thing happened with the word <furlough>.   We ended today’s orthography time by reading aloud our lists of words.  Tomorrow we’ll talk more about why the <ugh> trigraph is  in some of the words when it represents no sound.

 

We’ve Got Your Number!

As I was grading the first math test of the year, I couldn’t help but notice some interesting variations in spelling.  The word fifteen for instance was spelled fiveteen, fiffytin, fifetyn, and fivtyn.  The word seventy was spelled sevend,  and sevendy.  The word million was spelled millean, and millioin.  The word sixty was spelled sixdy and sextie.

Now, these students have been using these words for a long time.  I’m certain that at some point they  showed up on a spelling list and were studied.  So why don’t the students remember how to spell them?  Hmmm.

Let’s see if we can try to look at these words with a different goal in mind.  Yes, you heard me right – a goal other than spelling the words correctly.  I’d like the goal to be understanding the meaning of the word.  I’d like the goal to be understanding how the word is built.  I’d like the goal to be understanding some of the history of the word.  I’d like the goal to be imagining the base of the word without its prefixes or suffixes — or with other prefixes or suffixes so that what blooms in front of the researching student is a family of related words with a common base.   This is where the real excitement is!  I had a student last year who said, ” I love orthography because you learn to peel off prefixes and suffixes and find the base.  While you’re doing this, you learn to spell the word, and you didn’t even know you were!”  Those words are golden to me.  So my goal is not correct spelling … but I never forget that it is almost always a wonderful side effect of the word inquiry we do.

Having said all that, the obvious course of action was to ask students to investigate!   In this first video, Abby and Landin are wondering about the word <million>.  Their word sum hypothesis is  <milli> + <on> –> <million>.  My favorite thing about listening to them is their enthusiasm.  The thinking that is going on is like fireworks going off.

By the end of our morning, the three groups who were looking at this word had decided its word sum is <mille/> + <ion>.  They built the following word matrix.

The group that was investigating <seventy> found that <ty> was a suffix that represents ten when there are multiples of ten.  That clears up why, when counting by tens, the suffix used is <ty> and never <dy>.  Examples:  twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, etc.

This next video is of Ezra and Austin who are investigating the word <fifteen>.  Again, I am so impressed that these students are driven to prove what they think.   It’s about finding evidence.  Whoot!