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Will a Pandemic Lead to Pandemonium?

Do you remember the way you learned new vocabulary words when you were in school?  If your teachers were like mine, they said something like, “Here is a list of vocabulary words from our lesson/story/curriculum that I think are important for you to know.  Please use the dictionary and write a definition for each.  Then use the word in a sentence.”  Was that helpful as you moved forward in the lesson/story/curriculum?  Yes.  Yes, it was.  You learned what the word meant for the context you were presented with, and you learned how to use it in a sentence.  In this way, if you encountered that word in the future, you might remember what it meant and even be able to use it yourself.  For so many years, I thought that was enough.  I thought that there wasn’t anything else to know about a word.  But I was wrong.  I was soooo wrong!  Let me illustrate by choosing a word we currently see in the news every day.  Imagine that this is the list selected by your teacher as being words you should know to better understand the current health crisis situation.

~pandemic
~crisis
~coronavirus
~contagious
~quarantine

Here’s what your teacher asks you to do:   “Write a definition of each word and then use the word in a sentence.”

Pandemic:  “An outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population : a pandemic outbreak of a disease.”    The coronavirus is causing a pandemic.  (I used the Merriam-Webster dictionary.)

If we just stop there, we know something.  We can connect that understanding to what we read in the news.  But what if we looked more closely at this word?  What if we fully investigated this word using Structured Word Inquiry?  What more could we gain?

Pandemic:  “An outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population : a pandemic outbreak of a disease.”  According to Etymonline, it was first attested in 1660.  Before that it was in Late Latin as pandemus.  Before that it was in Greek as pandemos “pertaining to all people; public, common”, from pan- “all” and demos “people”.  Interestingly enough it is modeled on the word <epidemic> which may be less broad in its reach than a pandemic. The clue to that being the morpheme <pan> “all” being used in <pandemic> versus the morpheme <epi> “among, upon” being used in <epidemic>.

Here is what the Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes as the difference between <epidemic> and <pandemic>:

“A disease can be declared an epidemic when it spreads over a wide area and many individuals are taken ill at the same time. If the spread escalates further, an epidemic can become a pandemic, which affects an even wider geographical area and a significant portion of the population becomes affected.”

So an epidemic can become a pandemic, but a pandemic doesn’t become an epidemic.  Interesting distinction!

Now that we have an understanding of what this word means, let’s collect some of its morphological and/or etymological relatives.  Still looking at the entry for <pandemic> at Etymonline, we see a link to <demotic> and at the end of the paragraph <pandemia>.  If we follow the link to <demotic>, we see <democracy>, <demography>,  and <endemic>.  Before I leave Etymonline to search elsewhere, I try one more thing.  I type demos, the Hellenic root of this word into the search bar.  When I do that, many of the same words come up.  But there is one I didn’t find earlier — <demogogue>.  What a worthy addition to this group of morphological relatives.

Let’s take a look at this list:

pandemic  —  disease outbreak reaching all the people
epidemic  —  disease outbreak among a group of people
demotic  —  preferring to common people
pandemia  —  epidemic that attacks all people
democracy  —  government by the people
democratic  —  favoring government by the people
demography  —  studying the statistical characteristics of a specific population of people
demographic  —  relating to the statistical characteristics of a specific population of people
endemic  —  particular to a specific place group of people
demogogue  —  leader seeking political power by pandering to prejudices, fears, and ignorance of the people

Here is the grapheme/phoneme correspondence for <pandemic>:
<pandemic>
[pændɛmɪk]

Noting the denotation of the  bound base <deme>, the relationship between all of these words is now obvious.  We’ve gone from understanding one word, to understanding ten!  Instead of meeting one member of a family, we’ve met the family!  We are much more likely to remember them when we meet again!

But have we met all of the members?  Why didn’t I come across <pandemonium> when I was looking into this family?  It appears to share both <pan> and <dem>,  doesn’t it?  I can certainly think of pandemonium as a chaotic situation involving people.  As changes are happening in the way we are reacting to the coronavirus pandemic, it certainly feels like pandemonium!   The only way to know for sure is to look at Etymonline.

The first thing I notice is the 1667 spelling of this word.  Pandæmonium.  Notice the letter after the <d>?  That is the Old English letter known as ash.  We see that John Milton coined this word putting together Greek pan- “all” and Late Latin daemonium “evil spirit” which is from Greek daimonion “inferior divine power,” and before that from daimōn “lesser god.”  We see the same <pan> that we see in <pandemic>, but definitely not the same <deme>!

If we follow the link to <demon>, we find that it was first attested in the 12 c. and at that time meant “evil spirit, malignant supernatural being, devil.”  It is from Latin daemon and before that from Greek daimōn “divine power; lesser god.”  We have all the evidence we need to prove that the <deme> in <pandemic> is not the same <dem> that we see in <pandemonium>.  But is <dem> a base in this word?  That determination is something we haven’t collected enough evidence for.  So let’s gather a few morphological relatives of <demon>.  Below the entry for <demon> we see a list of related words.

~demoness
~demonarchy
~demonic
~demonize
~demonology
~pandemonium

Looking at this list of morphological relatives, it is obvious that the base is not <deme> as it is in <pandemic>, but <demon>!  And when I highlight the base as I have, it is easy to recognize some very familiar suffixes, isn’t it?  And before you point it out, yes, <arch> is a Hellenic base “ruler, leader, chief” and <loge> is also a Hellenic base “discourse, theory, science.”

Before we walk away from this investigation with the idea that pandemic is not related to pandemonium, we need to notice one more thing at Etymonline.  It is the Proto Indo European root for both <pandemic> and <pandemonium>.  Under the entry for <demotic> we see that Greek demos is from PIE *da-mo- “division,” from root *da- “to divide.”  Under the entry for <demon>, we see that Greek daimōn is from PIE *dai-mon- “divider, provider,” from root *da- “to divide.”  Looking at the entry for *da- we see this:

So I guess we can say that these two words are distant relatives!  Fascinating, isn’t it?   So what have we gained by going beyond a dictionary definition of the word <pandemic>?  How is what we have learned useful in understanding this word in the context of a current news story?  What we have learned not only deepens our sense of this word in this context, it also connects us to related words and prepares us for coming across any words in this family in the future.  The spelling ‘dem’ within a word will now be noticed by you and by me.  We will see it and pause for a moment considering whether it is the base <deme> having to do with people, the base <demon> having to do with evil spirits, or maybe not a morpheme on its own at all!  But the best part is that we have an understanding of those possibilities and will be able to determine which it is relatively quickly and get on with our reading!  You might say that Structured Word Inquiry helps you understand what you need to understand in the moment, but then also prepares you for words you will encounter as you read in the future.  A quick look in a dictionary just helps you in the moment.

I have just one more intriguing thing to share with you.  I came across this article today at Aleteia and couldn’t believe the irony.  It is about Saint Corona, whose remains are buried in Anzu, Italy, and who just happens to be one of the patron saints of pandemics.  If you’re like me, you are sitting there saying to yourself, “Is that for real?”  It is.  Read about it HERE.  Saint Corona died a tragic and disturbing death at age 16.

  
Wikipedia St. Corona, abt 1350

 

I’ve left you with the rest of the list we started with – the list of words related to our current world health crisis.  Besides a dictionary definition, what can you find out that would benefit your understanding now and also as you encounter other words in years to come?  Structured Word Inquiry affects your reading, your writing, and your enjoyment of learning!  If you find out really cool stuff, please share!

 

Crisis:  “A situation that has reached a critical phase.”   The spread of the coronavirus has caused a health crisis.

Coronavirus:  “any of a family (Coronaviridae) of single-stranded RNA viruses that have a lipid envelope studded with club-shaped projections, infect birds and many mammals including humans, and include the causative agents of MERS, SARS, and COVID-19 .”   There are new cases of the coronavirus in the United States every day.

Contagious:  “Transmissible by direct or indirect contact with an infected person.”   The coronavirus is extremely contagious.

Quarantine:  “A restraint upon the activities or communication of persons or the transport of goods designed to prevent the spread of disease or pests.”  People who have been exposed to the coronavirus are asked to voluntarily quarantine themselves.

 

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Twelve students and twenty minutes … Let’s make the best of this!

For about two months in late fall, I worked with a group of 12 students for 20 minutes a day, four times a week.  These were students I also saw for 90 minutes every day when they came in as part of their homeroom.  This small group opportunity is part of what our school calls WIN time (WIN stands for What I Need).  As a grade level team, we talk about the needs we see and how to group the students so we can address those needs.  I asked for this particular group of 12 based on spelling errors I saw in their writing samples at the beginning of the year. What an opportunity to reinforce some reliable concepts in our language!

We started by looking at words that take an <-es> suffix versus those that take an <-s> suffix.  I picked this because it’s a great place to begin noticing things about suffixing, digraphs, and roles of the single final non-syllabic <e>.  I could have started with any number of activities.  In fact, it seems that no matter where I begin when talking about English spelling, we end up reinforcing many ideas, just in different contexts.  That is the beauty of teaching with a Structured Word Inquiry focus.  We think about something particular, we collect some words to examine what it is we are focusing on, we make some observations about what we are seeing, and in the process of all that, we deepen our understanding of many things.  Most important of all, we build an understanding of the connectedness of these concepts and facts about how our spelling system works.

Another reason I chose to start with the <-s> and <-es> suffixes is that I wanted to give this group a preview of them before we discussed them as a larger group.  It always amazes me how much we can talk about in only 20 minutes!  We began by talking about using angle brackets to represent a spelling.  When we see a word in angle brackets, we spell it out.  We don’t announce it.  When we want to announce it, we can either write the word without angle brackets at all or we can represent the pronunciation in IPA.  If we use IPA symbols, we use slash brackets.  As you can see below, I demonstrated with the word <teach>.  I also showed the students how we might represent the graphemes and digraphs in the word <teach>.  The word has 5 letters and 3 graphemes.  One of the graphemes is a single letter grapheme, and the others are digraphs.  I don’t spend too much time on what I have just described because with this group beginning in mid-October,  this information is already something we are reviewing.

The next thing we did was to talk about words that can take an <-s> suffix.  If you look at the left side of the picture below, you’ll see that as the students suggested words, I was writing the final letter of the word + s.  In this way I could encourage the students to think of words that ended in other ways (besides words that end with the same letter that was previously named).  Since we already had the word <teach> on the board, I asked what suffix we would add if we wanted to talk about the person who teaches in the next room.  In this case, we are not adding a suffix in order to make the word plural.  We are adding a suffix to indicate the verb tense.  A few of the students knew we would add an <-es> suffix to <teach>, <peach>, and <coach>, but no one knew why.

When someone asked about <bounce>, I wrote it out as a word sum.  When a word ends in a single final non-syllabic <e>, it is not as obvious to the students that the suffix being added is an <-es>.  When we compare the spelling prior to adding the suffix to the spelling of the word after the suffix has been added, it would appear that only an <s> was added.  But that is not the case.

In order to understand why we need an <-es>, I directed the focus to the word someone had thought of that ended with a final <t> – <pits>.  We announced the word <pits> as /pɪts/ and noticed that we could easily feel ourselves adding the /s/ after the /t/.  Then we announced the word <teaches> as /titʃɪz/ and noticed that immediately following the /tʃ/ we said /ɪz/.  In fact we found it awkward and unsuccessful to follow the /tʃ/ with either /s/ or /z/ by itself.  In other words, we needed the suffix to be <-es> which would add an /ɪz/ to the pronunciation of the base.

Now we took a look at <bounce> (the rest of that list wasn’t there yet).  We tested to see if we could just add an <-s> suffix to bounce.  The students realized quickly that the word ends with an /s/ already.  Adding an <-s> suffix wouldn’t work. In announcing the word with the suffix added, we wouldn’t know where one /s/ left off and the next one began!  Then they tried adding the /ɪz/ of <-es> to the base /bɑʊns/.  That worked!

My next question to the students was, “Why does the word <bounce> have a final <e>?”  No one was sure.  There were guesses about the vowels in the word, but in this word, the <e> had a different role.  I asked if anyone could think of two more words that were similarly spelled.  The words <spice> and <fence> were suggested.  I asked, “Why weren’t we able to just add an <-s> suffix?”

“Because there was already an /s/ at the end of the word and it would end with /s..s/!”

Of course that led to lots of students trying to demonstrate how it wouldn’t work.  But that’s okay.  I know they understand.

“Does the <c> always represent /s/ in a word?”

“No.  It’s a /k/ in <cat>.  Oh!  The <e> tells us the <c> is /s/!”

We noted that in <spice>, the <e> was doing two things.  It was also indicating that the <i> would be pronounced as /aɪ/.  Next I asked if they could think of words that ended with a /s/ pronunciation, but were not spelled with a <c>.  They quickly thought of horse, house, and mouse.  We discussed the role of the single, final non-syllabic <e> in these words.  The <e> in these words had yet a different role!  It was preventing the words from looking like plurals when they clearly weren’t!  My favorite examples of where leaving off the final <e> would truly confuse a reader are please and pleas and dense and dens.  A student may not recognize why someone would think *hous is a plural word since *hou isn’t a word in English, but they will recognize that dens are where some animals live.

I left our notes on the board and explained the work my WIN group had done to my regularly scheduled classes.  The 12 were scattered among three classes and were eager to explain things for the rest of their class when the opportunity came up.

 

Day 2

The next day I wanted to continue looking at words that take an <-es> suffix.  I wanted to focus on the ending grapheme/phoneme correspondences when the word was in its singular form.  I listed the headings and together we noticed which graphemes could represent those phonemes.  In the first column, I started by underlining the final <tch> trigraph and/or the <ch> digraph. then we moved to the middle two columns that ended up including four different graphemes that could represent a final /s/!  As you can see, I wrote out word sums so they could see over and over that with these word final phonemes, we would need to use an <-es> suffix.  I also underlined the final graphemes in each word.  As we went along, the students tried adding an <s> pronounced as /s/ and then quickly knew they needed to add an <-es> pronounced as /ɪz/.  With words in the last column, we talked about the single, final non-syllabic <e> that was following the <g>.  The students wondered aloud if it was like the <e> that follows a <c>!  So then we could compare the <g> grapheme (when followed by an <e>) to the trigraph <dge>.

The last thing I did was to point out the vowel in front of the trigraphs <tch> and <dge>.  I asked if the students recognized whether they were considered short vowels or long vowels.  We said them together and they identified them as short.  I underlined them in red.

Again, I left our work on the board and shared our findings with the three larger classes.

 

Day 3

While sharing with the larger groups yesterday, someone asked about words with a final /z/ phoneme.  How brilliant, right?  Of course we added another column today and explored the graphemes that could represent the phoneme /z/.  Once more we went over the different final graphemes and proved to ourselves that they couldn’t take an <-s> suffix, whether it was representing an /s/ or /z/ phoneme.  The words with these final grapheme/phonemes needed to take an <-es> suffix that would be announced as /ɪz/.

 

Day 4

Today we went back to explore the words with either a final <tch> trigraph or a <ch> digraph.  The students brainstormed a bunch of example words of each.  Then we made observations about what was immediately in front of each.  We began to notice some consistencies.  In front of a word final <ch> digraph there was either a consonant or a vowel digraph.  In front of a <tch> digraph there was a single short vowel.  We wondered if this could explain why a <ch> is used in <bench> and not a <tch>.  It was time to get the students working on their own.  I split them into groups of two.  This is my favorite group size for word investigation.  Here are the specific topics of inquiry for each group:

~words in which a consonant precedes a final <ch> digraph.
~words in which a vowel digraph precedes a final <ch> digraph.
~words in which a single vowel precedes a final <tch> trigraph.
~words with a final <t>, but whose pronunciation changes when an <-ion> suffix is added.
~words with a final <t>, but whose pronunciation changes when a <-ure> suffix is added.
~words that take an <-es> suffix.

And they were off!  They got out their orthography notebooks and turned to the next available page.  One in each group grabbed a Chromebook so they could look at Word Searcher to find words with the targeted word ending.  They also had a dictionary handy in case there was a word they didn’t know.  I walked around to make sure each group was clear on what they were looking for.  Then I let them work on their own for the rest of the time.

 

Day 5

Another group work day.  They were collecting words and keeping track of them in their notebooks.  I walked around and checked in to make sure they weren’t collecting words they didn’t know when there were plenty of words they did know to choose from.  That seems like something I shouldn’t have to do, but my students are new to tasks that ARE NOT busy work.  They are used to mindless spelling tasks in which they aren’t expected to really think about what they are doing and why.  After years of Words Their Way, they are used to shifting words into piles that don’t necessarily make sense to them.  The words are moved there because of some surface-y reason that does not have any basis in the logic of our English spelling system.  And the students learn to do the task without asking the kinds of questions that lead to a better understanding that logic.

 

Day 6

I circulate, guiding the students in now grouping the words they found.  If they found a vowel digraph in front of the <ch> digraph for instance, how many words did they find with that same vowel digraph?  How many different vowel digraphs did they find?  Each group had some organizing to do before they could make observations.

 

Day 7

By this point, the groups were not all at the same point in their investigations.  That makes sense because they were investigating different things.  When one group starts making a poster or chart, the other groups get a little concerned.  They ask, “When is this due?” I always tell them that they will be given the time they need, provided they stay focused and productive each day.  The groups that were investigating digraphs and trigraphs were given large graph paper so they could share their findings by creating bar graphs.  The groups looking at a word final <t> and what happens to its pronunciation when an <-ion> or <-ure> suffix is added, made their own posters.  I asked them to include a page where they color coded the graphemes and phonemes in each word so we could see how the grapheme <t> ended up representing more than one phoneme.

As the groups finished, I asked them to write scripts.  What would they say as they presented their findings?  I told them that when they had a script written, I would revise it, edit it, and then I would record their presentation with my camera.  They liked that idea!  I liked the idea that they now had to think through their observations as they were writing them down.  This took several days, and the video recording took several more for each group.  When one group was completely done, I gave them another investigation that could easily be finished with our regular classroom work (back with their homeroom groups).

Here are the videos sharing the investigative work they did.

 

 

As I was filming these, I saw that a few groups of students chose words that they didn’t know.  I was hoping to catch those prior to the presentations, but obviously I didn’t catch them all.  When I asked the students if they knew those words, an interesting thing happened.  They said they did!  And then they proceeded to announce the words.  Do you see here what I see?  The students who struggle with reading and writing the most believe that announcing a word means you know that word.  Can they use it in a sentence?  No.  Do they know what it means?  No. But they have been taught (without the words necessarily having ever been said out loud) that announcing a word is what’s important in reading.  It is more important than what the word means.  Fluency over comprehension.  That is what the students think.  This is why I will always push the idea that a word’s meaning is the most important thing to know about a word.  Once we know its meaning, we can research to understand its spelling and then its pronunciation.

I have seen the effects of the small group work with the students mentioned in this post.  On a day that we were reviewing suffixes, they spoke up confidently about when to use <-es> versus <s>.  In the group work we are currently doing, they no longer sit quietly.  They contribute.  They question.  In their daily work I am still seeing spelling errors.  Of course I am.  I cannot single handedly help 75 students understand every single spelling error they make.  But what I can do is help them understand some of the consistent patterns we see in English.  Notice I said to “understand some of the consistent patterns.”  Up until now they may have been required to memorize lists that had consistent patterns, but that is not the same as understanding why a spelling is one way and not another.  What I teach helps them understand the spelling of many words – even words they don’t know yet.  I am teaching how the system works, not just how a single word is spelled.

Once the last group was finished with video recording, the WIN groups were reshuffled so that other needs in other areas could be addressed.  I have a new group now.  We are not working on word investigations.  This time we are reading Peter Pan and stopping to talk about the colorful and often times unfamiliar vocabulary used.  We also pause to look at the specific writing techniques of James M. Barrie.

And just in case you are wondering, our current project is focused on the topic of assimilated prefixes!

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Do we make a din at dinner or do we dine during dinner at the diner?

Mel's Diner

Last week my students wrote poems.  As I was editing them, one of the errors I saw over and over was the use of <your> when <you’re> was needed.  With a recently viewed meme in mind, I wrote the following on the board:

your dinner

you’re dinner

As the students filed in and sat down, the giggles began.  Some recognized right away the meaning difference between these two.  I asked for a volunteer to share what “your dinner” means with the whole class.  Even though I could tell that many understood what each meant, it was interesting to me that there was some struggle in putting that understanding into words.  To say that “your dinner” means “your dinner” isn’t very clear, is it?  The understanding is so clear in the student’s mind, that they don’t realize they are not communicating that clarity.  The student who was defining “your dinner” went so far as to reach her hands out in front of her as if she was handing me a plate of something.

Such an important reminder!  I can never forget that even when I am confident that my students understand something, I must give them lots of opportunities to express that understanding either orally or in writing.  Expressing oneself with clarity comes with practice!

I asked if anyone could add words to that explanation that would help.  A student said, “It’s not my dinner, it’s yours.”  That helped because without using the word, it illustrated that the dinner is in “your” possession.  Since we have been identifying parts of speech in sentences lately, I asked what kinds of words both “your” and “dinner” were.  This is an understanding that is growing, but not fully there yet for all students, so I called on a student that I knew would be able to answer the question.  The student identified “your” as a possessive determiner that is announcing the noun “dinner.”  Great!  A possessive determiner makes sense because we understand that the dinner belongs to someone and that “dinner” is a noun.

Even more students were excited to explain the meaning of “you’re dinner.”  The student I called on said easily that “you’re” is short for “you are” so that this phrase is saying that “you will be eaten for dinner!”  Anyone who hadn’t been sure of the difference between these two phrases laughed at this point.  Students turned to one another and excitedly imagined telling each other that they were the dinner.  When it was time to regain their attention, I asked if anyone knew the word we use to name a word like “you’re.”  Several could kind of remember how it started but not the word.  So I said, “It’s called a contraction.”  Among the “Oh, yeah,” comments that I heard, one student in the front blurted out, “You mean like when someone’s having a baby?”  I gave the room full of ten-year-olds a moment to laugh uncomfortably before I replied.

“Well, actually, the sense in both situations isn’t that different.”
“Whaaaa?”  More giggles and sounds that expressed disbelief.
“When a momma human or animal is giving birth, the muscles contract to push the baby out.  When two words like ‘you’ and ‘are’ contract, the letters push together so intensely that one letter pops out.  We mark the missing letter with an apostrophe.”

Next I wrote the word ‘contraction’ on the board and asked for a word sum hypothesis.

Looking over what the student had written, I asked if anyone could offer evidence to support the idea of a <con> prefix.  Could anyone think of a word with one?

“Conduct.”
“Contradict.”
“Confess.”
“Convict.”
“Confident.”

And then someone said, “Contract,” and when he did, one student made a funny face.  So I asked if contract was a familiar word.  Yes, it was.  What does it mean if you sign a contract with someone else?  A student replied that it meant there was an agreement between the two people. Great.  Now I looked back for the quizzical look I saw a few minutes ago.  I asked what the student was thinking.  She said, “I was thinking of ‘contract’.”  And as she said it I realized that she was putting the stress on the base <tract> instead of the prefix <con>.  What a delightful detour this would be!

So we talked about contracting a cold or a disease and how that was an action verb.  But when the stress was on the prefix <con>, the word was a noun.  We could say that for sure because we could use the indefinite article ‘a’ in front of it.  We could talk about a contract.

Because I didn’t want to leave the topic without a few more examples, I wrote two more words on the board that could likewise be read as a noun and a verb, depending on the stress placement.

With ‘record’, the students thought of the verb first with the stress on <cord>.  So I let them practice shifting that stress to then recognize the noun ‘record’ which might refer to the time to beat in a race (I want to beat my record of 22 minutes!).  I chose ‘combine’ on purpose.  I have several students who live on farms.  Those were the hands that popped up first on this one.  “A combine (stress on the prefix) is a machine used on a farm.  It is a noun.”

And, this being such a commonly used verb, most everyone was able to shift the stress to the base <bine> to read the verb “combine.”  Several gave examples of how it might be used in a sentence.

Then the very best question came from a student.  “If these words look the same, how do you know whether it’s being a noun or a verb?”  I thanked this student for giving us one more glorious opportunity to reinforce an important concept.  It is how the word is functioning within the sentence.  We have to look at where it is in the sentence and how it is functioning to know.  Seeing as the next item on our agenda for the day was grammar, I was particularly happy about setting the grammar lesson up in this way!

I was ready to get back to looking at the word sum for <contraction>, when I saw a hand waving in the air.  It belonged to someone who is less apt to contribute in class, so I called on him.  “What about ‘conscience?’  Does that have a <con> prefix?”  I love talking about this word and in particular the base of this word <sci>. The pronunciation is so different in members of its word family, that if you only hear the words conscience, conscious, and science, you might not realize that they even are the same base.

We have talked before about the structure of <science> being <sci + ence> and the base <sci> having a denotation of “know.”  So I applied that to <conscience>.  Your conscience is that part of you that knows right from wrong.  When we say, “Let your conscience be your guide,” it means to rely on those inner feelings that tell you which is a right choice and which is a wrong choice.  Then you will know what to do.  And then, of course, there is the word <conscious>.  When you are conscious, you know what is happening around you.  When you are unconscious, you do not!  Now back to the word sum for <contraction>.

I stated that we had just come up with a lot of evidence to show that <con> is a prefix in a lot of words, so it is quite plausible to think it might be a prefix in <contraction> as well.  Next it was time to think about the next element in the hypothesis, <tract>.  I asked if anyone could think of a word with <tract> in it.

“Tractor.”
“Traction.”
“Subtract.”
“Abstract.”

Since I hadn’t even gotten to the word I wanted to investigate with them yet, I told them what I knew about this base.  (As opposed to looking it up at Etymonline with them.)  There are so many side trails we could take with initial questions like this one, that I need to balance when I share my understanding and when I have them dig for the understanding.  It has to do with how engaged they are and how long I predict that engagement will last.

I told them that the base <tract> has a denotation of “draw or pull.”  Then I asked, “Does a tractor have anything to do with drawing or pulling?”  They all nodded yes.  “What if your boots have traction on the ice?”  Again, they agreed that it would pull on the ice instead of sliding.  “When you subtract numbers, is there a sense of pulling down or drawing from the first number and taking some away?”  Yes, they could imagine that.  “And when we think of abstract nouns, aren’t we thinking of the nouns that aren’t concrete?  The ones that have been withdrawn from the concrete nouns?  The ones that are separate from material objects such as your chair, desk, and pencil?”

They could see it, but we talked about that denotation being strongest in the words ‘tractor’ and ‘traction’.  They had more of a physical sense of pulling and drawing whereas subtract and abstract were more of a mental image of pulling rather than that physical action.

So in the end, it was decided that our word sum hypothesis could make sense based on the fact that we recognized both <con> as a prefix and <tract> as a base.  We had already talked about the word <contract>, so we knew that <ion> was a suffix in this word.  Now on to the really interesting question for the day!

I asked if anyone had a word sum hypothesis for the word ‘dinner’.  As soon as I asked it, I turned to the class and rather excitedly said, “I’ve never thought about where this word comes from or what its word sum will be.  We will be learning about it together!”  Below is a picture of some of their hypotheses.

There was one more word sum that is not on the list above.  It was <di + nn + er>.

When we began the conversation about these four possibilities, we noticed that three of them had an <er> suffix.  We brainstormed a few words with a clear suffix and decided that an <er> suffix was plausible.  then we looked at the other identified elements.  Looking at the first hypothesis, I asked if anyone knew the word <din>.  They did not.  I explained that a din is an ongoing noise.  I could say that there was quite a din coming from the indoor recess area.  So then I wondered aloud if at dinner the participants were creating a din.  Hmmm.  The students thought that perhaps sometimes that is the case, but not always.  We thought that if the base was <din>, then we could imagine the <n> doubling when the <er> suffix was added.

The second hypothesis (<dinn + er>) was similar to the first.  The base is still listed as <dinn>, although unless this is an alternant spelling to <din>, this might be a different base or it might not be a base at all.

The third hypothesis (<dine/ + n + er>) was interesting too.  It put the related word <dine> in our minds.  It makes sense to think of dinner as being that time when we dine.  But it didn’t take long for someone to point out that we wouldn’t replace the single final non-syllabic <e> with a consonant.  Good point.  If the second <n> wasn’t part of this, it would be a solid hypothesis for <diner>!

When we got to the fourth hypothesis (<di + nn + er>), I modeled giving it every consideration even though in my own head I had doubts.  The students did not recognize <di> as a prefix, nor <nn> as a base.  So offhand, we could not think of much evidence to support this one.

We were now at that point where we needed a reliable etymological resource.  I pulled up Etymonline on the Smartboard.

There were a lot of interesting things in this entry.  First off we talked about how old this word was and that in the 1300’s it was used to mean “the first big meal of the day.”  Right away the students blurted that it is no longer the first big meal of the day.  As we read through the entry, we noticed that earlier than the 1300’s, this word was from the Old French disner “breakfast.”  When we go to the recontructed stem of Gallo-Roman (*desjunare) with a meaning of  “to break one’s fast,” we paused to think about what that meant.  There were a few students aware that the word breakfast meant to break one’s fast.  There were also a few who did not know what a fast was.  I explained that if their last meal was the night before, they fasted while they were asleep which means they did not eat while they were asleep.  Once they started eating their next meal (breakfast) they were breaking the fasting they were doing while sleeping!

The very next thing in the entry indicated that the reconstructed *desjunare was from the reconstructed Vulgar Latin *disjejunare.  Here’s where it gets especially interesting.  The reconstructed Vulgar Latin *disjejunare is from <dis> “do the opposite of” and Late Latin jejunare “to fast.  Wow.  So the word <dinner> is from a Vulgar Latin word that means “the opposite of fasting.”  We had to say this a few times out loud.  “To fast is not to eat.  And the word dinner derives from a word that means the opposite of not eating which means, of course, eating!

Since both *desjunare and *disjejunare are reconstructed, I didn’t feel as if we had evidence to say that in Modern English we could support a word sum like <di + nn + er>, but we could sure see the story of this word’s spelling in the history!  The prefix in <di> could definitely be an assimilated form of <dis>, and the <nn> could be representing <jejune> although I need to know more before I say that with any authority.  I left it like this with the students.  We are calling <dinner> a free base with the understanding that its literal meaning is to do the opposite of fasting.  We feel that it is strongly related to <diner>, but the two would not be on the same matrix.

We also talked about how dinner used to name the noonday meal and that it gradually shifted to later and later in the day.  I told them that when I was a little girl, my lunch time meal was called dinner and the evening meal was known as supper.  These days we think of dinner as our evening meal and lunch as, well, lunch!  As for supper, Etymonline says it is from Old French soper “evening meal.”  We may use dinner and supper interchangeably these days to refer to the last meal before bedtime, but as we have shown, they are not synonyms!  They have different meanings and stories!

Further down in the entry was this information:

Dinner-time is attested from late 14c.; dinner-hour is from 1750. Dinner-table is from 1784; dinner-jacket from 1852; dinner-party by 1780. Childish reduplication din-din is attested from 1905.

It was interesting to follow this list of extended uses for dinner and the years in which those uses were recorded.  What’s funny to me is that when I think of a dinner-jacket, I think of James Bond.  What was funny to the children was the use of  “din-din.”

At the end of the day after the students were gone, my mind couldn’t stop thinking about the word sum hypothesis with the <di> prefix.  Was there evidence at the Oxford English Dictionary that would help me further?  Interestingly enough, the etymology information for <dinner> linked me to the etymology information for <diner>!

Diner:

We see some of the same information here that we saw at Etymonline in the entry for <dinner>.  The smaller print says that disner contains the same elements ultimately as French déjeuner, Old French desjuner and owes its greater phonetic reduction to its belonging to an earlier period.  So the spelling reflects a phonetic reduction from one of the French spellings or perhaps from one of the late Latin reconstructed spellings.  My uncertainty about the direct path the spelling took is what I have based my decision on when I leave <dinner> as a free base.  Perhaps someone reading this will be able to direct me to another resource or have a deeper understanding of what I can learn from the OED entry.  Until then, I will only go as far in my analysis as I have evidence for.

This is the kind of teaching and learning I love.  The students find it interesting and are drawn in as participants in the critical thinking that is going on.  They are thinking carefully and learning what it means to “provide evidence in support of a hypothesis.”  Every time we read an etymological resource together, they understand how to better use the information offered there.  When I can, I point out a connection to some aspect of grammar that we are learning.  At the end of the day I was able to send them home and tell them to have a good din-din … especially if they were lucky enough to be having their dinner in a diner!

Delicious Food Served Sign

 

by

Waiting for the Tides to Change

Picture courtesy of www.willstevenphotography.com

When you begin to learn what is real about English spelling, you also begin to swim against the current in an educational world that has been led to believe that reading is simply the act of unlocking a code – that code being the letters of our alphabet.  In many such programs, teaching reading means beginning with isolated spoken sounds and matching them to written letters. That is followed by practice at “sounding it out.”  The newest buzz word for this is “orthographic mapping.”  The student is taught to attach a pronunciation to groups of 1-4 letters.  These letter groupings are somewhat consistent, but there are a lot of them to know to automaticity in order for a child to read fluently.  If “sounding out” a word can’t make it recognizable, it is deemed “irregular.” 

Those in the front lines (tutors, interventionists, and teachers of pre-k, kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade) who have received intense training in these phonics-first models or have grown up in a system using these models, seem to struggle the most in imagining a world that begins with meaning and then considers morphology, etymology, and phonology as interrelated in explaining a word’s spelling.  Interrelated.  Not one first in isolation, but the three facets of a word coming together to explain its meaning, spelling, and pronunciation.  In this way the student is presented with a system right from the start.  They are not taught specific strategies for reading that are then misapplied to writing.  They are not taught that English spelling is crazy or that it cannot be understood.  Instead the students learn from the start how speaking, reading, and writing can be used to represent our thinking.  Much of the system we have is logical and predictable.  (Many of the suffixing and other conventions are predictable.  Learning that words are built from bases and that the spelling of bases within a morphological family is consistent is logical.)  Students learn how to question what they do not understand.  In fact their questions are encouraged and even celebrated, sending the underlying message that asking questions is key to learning.  They are taught to see meaning relationships between words that share a base element, and that even when the pronunciation within that word family shifts, the spelling doesn’t. They are taught that all words have a structure, a spelling, and a pronunciation that can be explained and understood.

When first hearing about Structured Word Inquiry, many trained educators who have experienced the gamut of “spelling programs extraordinaire” figure this too is full of promises it can’t fulfill.  And when they hear there is no scope and sequence, they get downright jittery.  How in the world will they know what to say and what to teach without a teacher guide to tell them?  But that’s just it.  Structured Word Inquiry is NOT A PROGRAM.  It is a course of investigation driven by curiosity.  Rather than a list of words to learn each week, there are principles to visit and revisit via words chosen that enhance curricular content, are someone’s personal favorites, or are suggested for any of a number of reasons.  There is no teacher manual full of answers because an answer to every question is not what I want my students to expect.

Ponder that for a moment.

There is no teacher manual full of answers because an answer to every question is not what I want my students to expect.

In the education world, when a question is posed, everyone searches for an answer.  They stop when they get one they are satisfied with, and the conversation moves on.  But, especially in the sciences, don’t we accept that answers are temporary?  That at some future time, some scientist may discover a different answer to the same question?  A deeper understanding?  THAT is the same mindset I use when teaching Structured Word Inquiry.  Sometimes I refer to it as Scientific Word Investigation, which more appropriately represents the scientific rigor and evidence-based thinking that is integral to this.

Unfortunately, we live in an educational world in which most people have stopped wondering about a word’s spelling and have just fully accepted that our language has no rhyme or reason to it.  The teachers think they are teaching how our spelling system works, but if they are really really honest with themselves, they will admit that they wish they could explain the spelling of words like of, come, have, does, they, laugh, give, the, and countless others that end up on Word Walls in far too many classrooms.  Every year a child is in school, they encounter more and more of these words that the adults only know to shrug their shoulders at, reinforcing the idea that English spelling is crazy.  It is amazing to me that we all accept (and yes, I accepted it too for many years) the idea that there is no explanation to be had for words that can’t be sounded out.

But why is it like this?  Why aren’t the explanations accessible to teachers?  Why have teachers been told instead to use “rules” that don’t statistically work?  Not only am I referring to the old “I before E” rule, but also to the “Two Vowels Go Walking” rule.  Did you know that the “i before e” part of that rule is only accurate 75% of the time?  Or that the “except after c” part of that rule is only accurate 25% of the time?  Or that when looking at the top (meaning most common) 2,000 words, the “when two vowels go walking” rule was found to be accurate only 36% of the time?

Here are two more “rules” that deserve to be banned.  The first says, “When a stressed syllable ends in e, the long sound of the vowel is used, and the final e is silent.”  It works for words like bike, pope, and rake, and doesn’t work for give, love, and move.  Teachers will find it surprising that it is accurate only 68% of the time.  (Those teaching with SWI will recognize a different way to explain what is happening there – it has to do with the function of the single final non-syllabic <e>.) The second rule says, “When there is only one vowel in a stressed syllable and the vowel is followed by a consonant, the short vowel sound is used.”  This works for fix, hop, and cat, but not for mind, wild, and fold.  This one too works only 68% of the time.

I find it astounding that creative people have used their talents to come up with these “rules” instead of demanding to understand why words are spelled the way they are!  Is it really that there is no explanation?  Hardly.  Are the explanations really so complicated that teachers and children alike can’t learn or understand them?  Again, hardly.

In my opinion, the three biggest problems  are these:

ONE

The inaccuracies have been embedded in the teaching for so long that as a society we have become complacent.  There is a general acceptance of the notion that English spelling is crazy and can’t be understood.  We see this all over the internet.  People print what they perceive to be the ridiculousness of English spelling on coffee cups and T-shirts, and everybody laughs.  People offer proof of the craziness of English spelling by asking why ‘bomb’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘tomb’ or ‘comb’.  But who said they had to?  You can blame that expectation on teachers who first taught those people to read.  They may not have said it specifically, but after having students complete worksheet after worksheet with  cat, rat, sat, pat, tip, sip, rip, lip, and cup, sup, pup, children get the message.  Words that have the same letter string will always rhyme.  And no one ever tells them differently.  Children learn what you tell them, but also what you imply.

TWO

Teachers cannot teach what it is that they themselves do not understand.  This lack of understanding is so pervasive because there are very few colleges that equip teachers with orthographic understanding. The textbooks offered to future teachers of reading are smattered with the inaccurate rules listed above.  It would be difficult indeed to sort out what is worth using with children and what is not.  And the curricular materials school districts spend millions on every year are no different.  Many teachers can sense that the materials are not helping their students, but don’t know enough on their own to understand specifically what parts are utter nonsense.  All the company has to do is slap the words “evidence based” or “research based” on the cover, and the school districts are all in.  No one in any of those districts is reading any of that “evidence” or “research” and the company counts on that.  The companies simply put a new spin on the old content and market it.  School districts see where there are weaknesses in their ELA scores, and want to find something that will help their teachers improve scores and ultimately assist their students in becoming better at reading and writing.  They believe the companies know what they are doing.  But those administrators, like the teachers, like the teacher-prep colleges, and like the curricular material  companies don’t understand English spelling themselves.  The curriculum companies get as creative as they can in presenting spelling as a fun activity, but the bottom line is that one cannot teach what one doesn’t understand.

THREE

Many children will learn to read even without understanding how our spelling system works.   This is what keeps so many spelling programs and curricular materials in business.  It is also what keeps so many well meaning teachers and their students in the dark.  If a child can read, then what does it matter whether or not they understand a word’s spelling?  There will always be spellcheck, right?  This idea that reading is primarily about sounds represented as letters may seem to be so obvious when a child is learning to read.  But as they advance through the grades and encounter longer and more interesting words, their missing understanding about the morphology and the etymology that affects the phonology is the thing that becomes obvious.  Why don’t they know that some letters are etymological or orthographic markers, or that a word’s etymology has much to do with the graphemes that spell it?  Why weren’t they taught that English spelling is a system and that each year their understanding of that system could grow to accommodate any newly acquired words?  Instead it is assumed that if they learn to read in kindergarten and 1st grade, they will naturally maintain that reading proficiency and spelling proficiency automatically as they move through grades, even when the materials used include inaccurate information such as I’ve mentioned above.

An example of such nonsense was recently brought to my attention by a teacher using Words Their Way.  Her students were asked to spot the <un> in unplanned, unprepared, unlock and uncle.  Really?  The <un> in three of those words is obviously a prefix.  Why would ‘uncle’ be included here?  Are the students supposed to think it also has an <un> prefix, or is this just an indicator that children are not being taught that a word has structure (is comprised of morphemes)?  Then, within that same week, the same teacher told me about the task in which her students were supposed to spot the <re> in rethink, replay, reheat and reptile.  She wondered what she was missing.  Was there an <re> prefix in ‘reptile’?  Of course not.  This teacher was not missing anything, but her students sure were.  They were missing the framework by which to understand the words they were being asked to read and write.  They were missing being taught the structure (morphology), history (etymology), and using both of those to understand the pronunciation (phonology) of words.  They were missing feeling comfortable to ask questions about things that don’t make sense (whether or not the teacher has a ready answer).  The fact that students no longer ask questions about spelling by grade 4 should be a big red flag to teachers everywhere.  Sadly it isn’t.  The students have learned that the teacher won’t be able to answer or guide them to resources that would help anyway.  They have no expectation that English spelling will make sense.  That is sad.  It doesn’t need to be that way.

My students don’t deserve to be limited by the boundaries of my own understanding.

Wood Farm Fence Clip Art And 4Vector

As teachers, we often feel more effective if we can anticipate the questions our students might ask and be ready with an answer. When we can successfully do that, we feel knowledgeable and think we are presenting ourselves as knowledgeable to our students.  But there’s a catch to all that.  In many instances teachers create a façade of having background in content knowledge.  They have learned to rely on a teacher manual more than they rely on their own professional expertise.  I don’t really want my students believing that I know everything or that I have all the answers.  There are only a few students who would be brave enough to ask a question in that situation.  Most fear looking “stupid” by asking a “stupid” question in the presence of someone who appears to be an expert, whether or not that is actually the case.  If you’ve ever found yourself wondering why your students don’t ask more questions, perhaps you have set up this atmosphere without realizing it.

Here’s an example of a well meaning teacher who tried to limit her students to her own level of understanding.  Each year I coordinate a Science Fair at our school.  I’ve been doing it for years.  (The simple reply to why I do it is that there are always those students who shine at the Science Fair in a way that is unexpected by adults/peers in their lives.  Those adults could be adults at school who only see certain aspects of the student (math, reading, behavior issues, etc.), or they could be extended family or neighbors.)  Anyway, one year there was a colleague who was guiding her own students through the process of getting ready for the Science Fair.  She approached me and asked if we might change the scope of the Fair just a bit.  Because she didn’t feel particularly knowledgeable about many areas in science, she was suggesting that we choose ten topics.  The students could then pick one of those topics for their Science Fair project.  In this way, she could anticipate questions and most likely be able to answer them as the students progressed through the weeks of experimenting.  It would make participating in the Science Fair more comfortable for her.

As much as I understood why she was asking this, I couldn’t agree to it.  It might eliminate the possibility of a student following a passion or interest.  We all know what happens when a student is forced to pick a topic they are not interested in.  That is not a way to encourage curiosity and creativity.  When one of my students picks a topic I have no background in, I tell them how excited I am that we will both be learning about the topic.  In fact, I find myself asking lots of questions when the student and I journal.  (Since I am now the lone science teacher at our grade level, journaling is how I communicate individually with the 75 students I currently prepare for the Science Fair.)  My own curiosity is aroused when a student picks a project or wonders about something no one else has picked or wondered about in the last 25 years of Science Fairs!  Instead of limiting the students to my own background knowledge, I embrace stretching my background knowledge to include something new, and I model the enthusiasm that goes along with learning!  It is very similar to how my students and I study the English spelling system.

My students and I find a sense of relief in the freedom that comes with not having to have the one right answer to every question.  And yes, I included myself there.  I never realized the “must know the right answer” burden I was carrying until I began investigating words. Since that day, I have moved forward as wide-eyed and curious as my students.  I have experienced the joy of scholarship, and that has fueled a passion for desiring to know more.  My students see me as someone who has a deeper understanding than they do, but also as someone who is eager to learn more.  I make a big deal when a student asks a question I never thought to ask about a word or about a spelling.  I make an even bigger deal when it is a great question that I don’t know the answer to.  Just as in my Science Fair example, I am excited to know that the student and I will both learn something useful!  My students are fully aware that I don’t know everything about English spelling.  I am not setting up any false illusions about that.  Yet we all understand that I am in the best position to guide the inquiries until they learn the process for themselves.  And that is my goal – to teach my students how to use SWI on their own to deepen their understanding of the words they wonder about.

Here’s another example of a teacher whose students are limited in their learning by the teacher’s background knowledge. This is something I read on a blog the other day.  The teacher is a kindergarten teacher who is teaching her students to read.  She is enthusiastic and sincere in wanting her students to succeed.  The task she describes is that of teaching sight words.  First she says the word in question.  Then she has them isolate the sounds they hear.  Then she shows them the letters that represent those sounds by writing them on the board (orthographic mapping).  She begins with the letters that represent a pronunciation that is predictable.  Then she unveils the letters that represent a pronunciation in a way that isn’t expected.

“Sometimes I like to get a little dramatic as I unveil the word. -Especially for really irregular ones…my students died laughing when I revealed the spelling for “of” and showed the shock and craziness of the word with my expressions.”

If she herself had an explanation for the spelling of <of>, surely she would offer it.  Since she doesn’t, she teaches her students that English spelling is often worthy of shocked looks and crazy expressions.  When I asked why she embeds this rather unhelpful implication in her teaching of reading and writing, she defended it by saying that it made the sight words memorable and that the learning was fun this way.

Now I completely understand the idea of making learning fun and memorable.  That is something I reflect on often in my own teaching.  But I have learned to draw the line when what becomes memorable is a false premise for future learning.  I understand that her goal for the school year is to have her students read and write.  What she is doing will probably help her succeed in that.  The method she is using is called Evidence Based Literacy Instruction (EBLI).  I have no doubt that students being taught by this method leave kindergarten being able to do some reading and writing.

So if a goal as important as reading and writing is met, what’s the harm in her method?  Well, let’s think about this.  If she is teaching all “irregular” words in this way, she is sending the specific message to her students that many spellings are crazy and cannot be understood.  And she is implying this over and over and over.  By the end of the year, their overall impression of our spelling system is set.  If the first grade teacher is also unequipped to explain words deemed “irregular”, then the students will receive a second year of subliminal messaging that “English spelling is unreliable and can’t be counted on to make sense.”  What happens in second grade?  More of the same?  At what point are the students given the “straight skinny” about their spelling system?  At what point do they meet a teacher who is willing to encourage their questions about why words are spelled the way they are and show them how to seek a deep understanding, knowing that what we understand is easier to remember? And if those students are lucky enough to encounter a teacher who can actually explain “irregular” spellings, along with supplying logical and predictable features of our spelling system, how on earth does that teacher have the time in one year to reset the attitude their previous teachers have nurtured?  This is not a hypothetical situation.  It is what I face every fall with each new fifth grade group.

Like I said before, I believe this kindergarten teacher’s desire to nurture successful readers is sincere.  But in a really huge way, isn’t she limiting their understanding to her own?  It is obvious that EBLI doesn’t offer any explanations for the spellings of sight words.  If it did, this teacher would use them.  Her heart is in the right place when it comes to doing right by her students.  But how possible is it to be truthful right from the start with beginning readers when the teacher is missing so much herself?  I often ponder this very idea because for years I didn’t question the idea of irregular words either.  I just accepted that irregular words are words that can’t be explained and need to be memorized.  This teacher is making that memorization fun, but in the end it is still just memorization.  There is no understanding being offered.  And I see a huge difference between “memorize this” and “understand this.”

Now let’s think for a moment about how a word ends up in the disgraceful “irregular” pile.  It has to do with the alphabetic principle.  We teach students that certain pronunciations will be spelled in certain ways using certain letters.  When a word’s spelling deviates from that, it is labeled “irregular.”  Some teachers (trying to make learning memorable) even shame the word by calling it “misbehaving.”  There are even those who go so far as to put the word in “jail”.  I love the fact that teachers are some of the most creative people I have ever met, but I also cringe when they use that creativity to disguise what it is that they themselves do not understand.

Unfortunately, too many teachers do not think young children are capable of understanding much about spelling.  Their excuse is that we need to limit their cognitive load.  Giving them a reason for a spelling, or planting any seeds about how fascinating and logical our spelling system actually is is out of the question in their minds.  In my opinion, when adults decide what a child’s capacity for learning is (without having met the child), that child is instantly disadvantaged.  If the only way to teach a child to read and write is to also teach the child that our spelling system is absurd and/or crazy, then I say find another way to teach reading and writing.

The number of classrooms in which children are being taught to read using SWI principles is growing every week.  Age appropriate explanations are provided to children in regards to any word’s spelling.  Right from the beginning, the children are taught to look for consistent spelling patterns,  morphemes, and to recognize word families.  They get lots of practice at recognizing grapheme/phoneme correspondences.  They are encouraged to notice things and to ask questions.  They enjoy making “word family” games for their classmates.  And at the end of the school year, they are reading and they are writing.  But most importantly, they are moving on to 1st grade expecting to read more, write more, and understand more about our language.  No one has to back up the bus and convince them that spelling is in fact logical and fascinating.  There is only a moving forward motion in their understanding!  Each year they revisit important principles and ask the questions that deepen everyone’s understanding.  They pull words out of context, investigate them at whatever level is appropriate, and notice other words that are related morphologically before putting the words back into context and discussing how understanding the word deepens its meaning within that context.  Some of the very same things taught or practiced in an SWI classroom are also what is being taught with a method like EBLI.  The major difference is the underlying belief that connects each year’s learning.

Imagine I had the choice of sending my young child to one of two classrooms.  In both classrooms, there is a strong chance that my child would learn to read and write.  The difference in the classrooms is this:  In classroom #1, the students will learn that spelling, the system they will use the rest of their lives, is illogical and a lot of the times so crazy you’ll want to roll your eyes at it.  They will memorize spellings without much understanding of why the word is spelled that way.  They will be taught that some words have explainable spelling patterns and that many do not.  They will practice sounding out words, and when a word can’t be sounded out, everyone will laugh at the word.  In classroom #2, the students will learn that spelling, the system they will use the rest of their lives, is reliable and logical.  They will immediately begin learning that words have structure and how understanding that fact will help them with building related words and spelling those related words.  They will learn a “spell it out” strategy in which they identify bases and graphemes within those bases at the same time they are learning the word’s pronunciation and its spelling.  They will learn that words have histories and that some words are very old.  They will be encouraged to ask questions about what they notice about a word’s spelling.  The teacher will help the students think through those questions.

I find it hard to believe people when they imply that it’s not possible to have the students leave kindergarten with the impression that there’s a reason for every spelling.
More and more teachers are proving the opposite of that every day.  If you are interested in finding out more about what happens in those SWI kindergarten classrooms, I encourage you to participate in study groups with Rebecca Loveless and Pete Bowers.  They have specifically worked with kindergarten teachers and their students.

It would be unrealistic to think we can teach without imposing (to some extent) the knowledge limits we each have.  But isn’t it our responsibility to constantly reflect on how our own limits affect our students?  I don’t like to think that I’ve invited my students into my yard (if we can think of my background knowledge as a yard with fences) and that they become prisoners there.  Or that if they ask questions about what is beyond that fence, I would need to make up cutesy explanations to keep them from exploring what I myself am not comfortable exploring.  I would rather think of this as me inviting them into my yard, and then when they ask questions about what’s on the other side of the fence, me going with them and modeling how to search for understanding.  In the process I would be showing them how to keep expanding their own yard by continually moving those fences.  When I am willing to either step outside my “fence” or to keep extending it, we all benefit as learners.

And here’s another thing that doesn’t often get considered.  Never forget that students are as deep-down satisfied to prove truths about our English language to themselves as we are!  When you spend year after year in classrooms in which the teacher is the expert, and you and your classmates are the buckets to be filled, this kind of investigating can be exhilarating!  Students find it refreshing, really, to be given the tools and the opportunity to raise a question and then to prove or disprove it to themselves.  My role becomes that of a guide, steering the questions the students have during an investigation back on them as often as possible, but also realizing when they have reached a point where they are truly stuck.

I might also add that I know of several adults with dyslexia who have shared with me their experiences of learning to read in school.  They were frustrated much of the time because they were asked to remember bits and pieces without a context.  Being told that our language was absurd or crazy made learning to read and write even harder because in effect they were being told it didn’t make sense.  Being given a solid understanding of the interrelationship of morphology, etymology, and phonology, however, has turned a truly laborious task into a fascinating one.  I’m not saying that their dyslexia has disappeared, but I am saying that they no longer feel as if they are staggering in the dark.  Those adults ask lots of questions and think through lots of their own hypotheses thanks to finding Structured Word Inquiry.  And every one of them is sharing their understanding with children.  They, more than almost anyone else, really get what a difference understanding the spelling system can make.

Doing what is right for children isn’t easy when you are swimming against the educational current.  When you have the guidelines of Structured Word Inquiry, when you  can see for yourself what is true, and when you can provide evidence to any doubtful package-loving administrators, you do so, and then you just keep swimming.  It’s what you do.

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Not Getting it Right the First Time is What Opens the Door for Learning!

Something quite amazing and wonderful happened the other day. But before I tell you about it, I need to tell you what led up to it.

In the past few weeks, students have been working on several orthography projects.  Prior to that, they had been working in groups to create podcasts.  As each group finished their podcast (based on a word investigation), they needed something new to investigate while the rest of the groups were still working.  Instead of assigning the same activity to all who were ready for something, I mixed things up.   In that way, when the students are ready to present, we will have a variety of orthographic concepts to be talking about.  Here are the projects I assigned:

1)  I let some students choose a word and independently investigate it. This has become a favorite activity among my students.  They enjoy the freedom of choosing their own word and then seeing what they can discover.  I like this activity because they get practice using etymological resources (reading and pulling information pertinent to their investigation).  They are able to choose whether to use Mini Matrix Maker or create their own matrix.  Each finished poster has the same types of information as all the others, yet has been touched by the individual student’s creativity.  Here are some examples of finished work:

2)  Some students were asked to think about an individual grapheme and the phonemes that can be represented by it.  They collected words to illustrate that one grapheme  can represent several different phonemes. Here are some examples of finished work:

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3)  Other students were paired up and asked to investigate assimilated prefixes.

I assign a particular prefix to a group.  I tell them the assimilated forms I want them to look at.  For example, in the picture below, this group looked at <ob->.  In addition to words with <ob-> prefix, they collected words that had the assimilated forms <op->, <oc->, and <of->.  Before I sent them on their way to find the words, I had them bring a dictionary to my desk so I could show them how to prove that the two initial letters were a prefix and not just the first two letters of a base.

My favorite dictionary for use in the classroom is the Collins Gage Paperback Dictionary.  Let’s look at the entry for <occupy>, and I think you’ll see why I like it so much.  First of all this dictionary gives the IPA.  Not all dictionaries do.  Then there are definitions with example sentences.  Near the bottom of the entry are related words.  And the last thing in the entry is important etymological information.  So <occupy> is from Latin occupare “seize”; <ob-> “up” and capere “grasp.”  I specifically show the students the prefix listed as <ob->, but that in the word, we see <oc-> because of assimilation having happened.

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Once they list words they’ve found in this dictionary, I ask them to use another source as well.  My point in doing that is that I don’t want them to rely on any one source as having all the answers.  There are interesting things to note when looking at multiple sources, as I’m sure you know.  Teaching that aspect of research is important and easy to do here.  If the student goes to word searcher next, then they will have to find their evidence of the first two letters actually being a prefix in an etymological reference.  We usually use Etymonline.  If the student uses the OED (Oxford English Dictionary), the etymological information will be there, although they may end up finding words that are no longer used (which is not necessarily a bad thing as long as they mention its last known use)

Here’s another example of a word with the assimilated prefix <of->.

What a beautiful opportunity to talk about stress in a word!  The two IPA representations show this word two ways.  The first is used when the word is defined as in definitions 4 and 5. (It says 5-6, but this must be a typo as there is no 6.)  The second is used when the word is defined as in definitions 1, 2, and 3.  Where I’ve highlighted, you see that this is from Latin offensa, past participle of offendere; <ob-> “against” and fendere “strike.”  Again, we see that in the etymological information the prefix is  listed as <ob->, but in the present day word, the assimilated prefix <of-> is used.  When the second element in the word begins with an <f>, the <of-> prefix has been used to better match the pronunciation of the first grapheme of the next element.

Two students who had been looking at the assimilated prefix <ad> said that they were ready to present their findings to the class. They had created a poster which they hung on the board.  As usual, their classmates pulled chairs close to the front and listened carefully, thinking of questions to ask and word meanings to wonder about.

As they began to share their findings it became more and more obvious that there was a problem.  They collected words that began with <an>, <al>, <at>, and <as>,  but in the words they collected, those letters were not necessarily prefixes. For example, they had the word <anteater> on their list. A classmate pointed out that it was a compound word, and that if we removed the <an> from <ant>, that would mean that <t> would have to be the base in that word. That didn’t seem likely.

Another word that classmates questioned was <atmosphere>. We studied that word at the beginning of the year and the students remembered that the word sum is <atm + o + sphere –> atmosphere>. Then I spotted <astrologist> and shared that the word sum would be <astr + o + log + ist –> astrologist>. We have come across other words with a structure similar to this (biologist, geologist, hydrologist, seismologist).

There were other words that obviously didn’t have the <ad-> prefix or any of its assimilated prefixes too.  The two had identified the <as> in <ashore> and the <ar> in <army>.

I did not take a picture of their poster, but the next day I took a picture of the notebook they used.  You can see that quite a few words on this list look questionable.  There are only a few that have an assimilated form of <ad-> as a prefix.  For example there is <announce> from  <ad>”to” and nuntiare “report”, and <attention> from <ad> “to, toward” and tendere “stretch.”  But most of the rest of these have a different story to tell.

The word <android> is from Greek andro- “man” and eides “form, shape.”  The word <angel> is from Greek angelos “messenger, one that announces.”  The word <anniversary> is from Latin annus “year” and versus “to turn.”  Enjoy yourself as you check out some of these others on your own!  So back to the presentation and what to do next.

It was obvious that the students must have copied words that began with the same letters as the assimilated forms of <ad-> without checking to make sure that those spellings were indeed a prefix.  Even this far into the year, I see that a few of the students still do word work on “automatic pilot.” This activity might have seemed like the word sorts they did in years prior that matched things on the surface of the word without much thought needed.  Perhaps they were confused when I explained how to find the evidence and didn’t let me know.  Regardless of how it came to be, we were looking at a huge misunderstanding of what a prefix is and what it isn’t!

But my next thought was protecting the inquisitiveness of these two students. They might begin to feel embarrassed if we kept pointing out words that didn’t belong on this list. There sure were a lot.  As a class, we have talked often about mistakes being the opportunity to learn something new, but this was a scenario through which I wanted to tread lightly.  I wanted to turn this investigation around without my students feeling any shame for having misunderstood the task.

But here’s where the amazing and wonderful thing came in.  When I suggested that these two scrap this poster and redo their look at the <ad> prefix, they matter of factly said, “Okay.”  They weren’t angry.  They didn’t feel defeated.  Their body posture didn’t show shame or humiliation.  (And believe me, I was watching those two closely.)  And because the attitude we’ve spent the year nurturing is one based on proving or disproving our hypotheses based on evidence, these two didn’t feel like quitting either!  It was such a deeply satisfying moment.  I was pleased, obviously, but also in awe of the environment the students and I have created that allows for failure without judgement.  I thought for the rest of the day about this.  What contributed to their rather amenable response to being asked to repeat their investigation?  When I think back to the beginning of the year,  I would have expected eyeballs to roll or mumbling to occur.  What was different now?  Well, I believe a huge part of the change is the mindset of the entire class.  The students (in the audience) who were questioning these words were speaking in a very neutral sincere tone. The presenters didn’t feel judged, and therefore were able to hear what was being questioned and why.

I said to the class, “Maybe it would be a good idea for all of us to review how we know when an initial <ad> is a prefix, versus when it is just part of the word. Can anyone think of a word that might have an <ad> prefix?  Let’s walk through the process again.  If these two misunderstood how to prove you were looking at a prefix, someone else might be misunderstanding as well.”

A student raised his hand and asked if we could look at<adolescent>.  “That’s a great word to look at!  I’m not sure what we’ll find about that initial <ad>!”

I pulled up Etymonline on the Smartboard so we could all see the entry.

We read through the entry and didn’t feel like the information we were looking for was here.  I reminded the students that following the link (dark red) is always a good idea.  So we clicked on <adolescent> (n.).

We read through the entry together, discussing the fact that they would be called adolescents because they were young people who were growing up.  Then we came to the information we were looking for.  This word is from Latin <ad-> “to” and alescere “be nourished” hence, “increase, grow up.”

Next I asked the class if anyone could think of another word with the base we see in <adolescent>.  I wasn’t  too surprised when no one raised their hand.  But it would be important to find one.  That would provide the final piece of evidence that in Modern English, we see this base in other words with either a different prefix or none at all.  We went to Word Searcher and typed<alesc> in the search bar.  We found coalesce, and convalesce.  I reminded the students that we had looked at the bound base <vale> “strong” in February and that <convalesce> was one of the related words we found.  When someone is convalescing, they are resting and growing stronger.  Interesting.  There is definitely a sense of “growing healthy” in this word, yet the <ale> spelling can’t be in both the <vale> base and the <alesce> base.  I mean it could, but in that moment, I didn’t know.  I would be putting that word on my “give this some further thought” list.   As I said that, several heads nodded in recognition.  Then we looked at <coalesce>.  The word <coalesce> means to unite by growing together.  It is an assimilated form of <com-> “together” and alescere “be nourished, grow.”  Cool!  Now we could verify that in the word <adolescent>, the <ad> is a prefix.

At this point the students were ready to have work time.  It surprises and delights me that individual work time is one of their favorite things!  There are even times (more often than one would guess) when students and I are together in the cafeteria or on the playground, and I am enthusiastically asked, “Do we get to work on our word projects today?”

I waited until everyone was busy at whatever task they were involved in.  Then I went over to follow up with the group that was redoing their <ad-> investigation.  One of the students was still a bit foggy about this investigation.  “Go get one of the red dictionaries,”  I told him.  When he returned, I said, “Open it to the section of words that begin with <ad>.”  I wanted to make sure these students were on the right track.  We came across the word <adopt>.  I had one of them read the entry out loud.  As we discussed this word, one of the students knew that babies could be adopted, but hadn’t really thought about ideas being adopted.  Then we came to the evidence we were looking for.  I have it highlighted for you.  I said, “Look at that!  The prefix has a sense of “to” and the base has a denotation of “choose!”  Does that make sense with what we understand this word to mean?”  They both agreed that it did.

Now I wanted to show them what they would find with one of the assimilated forms of <ad->.  I asked them to turn to the <ar> section.  As we read words on the page, we were looking specifically for the last line of each entry.  Then we spotted the words <Latin ad- “to” + restare “stop”>.  Our eyes went back to the header word which was <arrest>.  One of the students read the definition.  It was surprising to the students that arrest could mean stop as in the sentence, “Filling a tooth arrests decay.”  When we read the highlighted portion after having read the rest of the entry, it made sense.  To stop something is to make it stay.

At this point, I asked if they understood better what to be looking for.  They said they did and promised to call me over if they had any questions.  It was time to let them at it!

I made my way around the room checking in on other groups/individuals.  There were at least two groups that had completed a look at assimilated prefixes and were ready for another new investigation.  I called them over to my desk and gave them a mini lesson on Latin verbs.  We have talked about Latin verbs as a class, and now it was time for the students to investigate on their own.  I gave each group of two (and in some cases a student on their own) a card with the four principal parts of a specific Latin verb.  I will explain this process further in another blog post.

As I was talking to one group about Latin verbs, I saw the group that was redoing their work on assimilated prefixes raise their hands.  I went over as soon as I could.  “How’s it going? Are you finding words you have questions about?”

And then the boy (who is not generally excited about classroom stuff) enthusiastically said, “Yes!  Did you know that <journ> means “day?”

My first response was, “Yes, I did know that.  We see it in journal, right?”

“Wait.  What?  In journal?  How does that mean day?”

“Well, generally, how often does a person write in their journal?”

“Oh!  Every day!  Cool!”

“And what about a journey?”

“A journey?  That’s like going on a trip.”

“Right.  And your journey is measured in days.”

“That is so cool!”

And that’s when the bell rang and it was time to clean up and leave for the day.  Here’s the really funny thing.  These two that were enthusiastic about <journ> were the two who were working on the <ad-> prefix.  I walked away wondering how in the world they came across <journ> in their search for assimilated forms of <ad->.  But just now it seems so obvious.  You probably already put two and two together, didn’t you?  Or should I say <ad-> and <journ>.  Too funny.  I’ll have to make sure I adjourn the class tomorrow instead of dismissing them.  I’d love to see their eyes light up with recognition!

SWI provides a reliable framework for our investigations and guides our thinking.  Questioning becomes an expected activity and instead of being intimidated by someone questioning your work, you become interested, truly interested in what it is they question and whether or not you’ve misunderstood something.  Individually, the goal is always to understand things better.  In order to stay focused on that goal, you need to hear the questions and give them consideration.  Too often we hear a question, take it as a criticism, and then defend our position, right or wrong.  We’re not really considering the question.  Instead we are plotting our defense.  Structured Word Inquiry has brought a culture of listening and questioning to my classroom.  The words “right” and “wrong”  have been replaced with “proven” and “could be, but I’m not sure about that.”  That culture has made my room a safe place for learning.  A place for true scholarship.  It is an exciting place to be every single day!