Conferences: An Opportunity to Get the Word Out

This is what I shared with the parents of my students at our recent set of conferences.  Since those conferences were scheduled three weeks before the end of the trimester (which meant that my grades were not yet finalized) I used the opportunity to explain what I teach under the heading of orthography.

I began by explaining that one of my goals is to teach students why words are spelled the way they are.  A word’s spelling is primarily representing meaning, and not pronunciation.  An example of what I mean by that is the word <goes>.

On the day after our final performances of The Photosynthesis Follies, I gave a photosynthesis test.  As I was correcting the tests, I couldn’t help but notice that more students than I would’ve thought, misspelled <goes>.  Five students spelled it as *<go’s>, two students spelled it as *<gos>, three students spelled it as *<gows>, three students spelled it as *<gose>, and one student spelled it as *<gous>.  Sometimes when I mention to colleagues that students struggle with spelling, their first reaction is to say, “They need more phonics!  Those lower grades must have stopped teaching phonics!”  But I say no.  It is pretty obvious that the students have learned to spell phonetically.  Anyone reading their work can guess what word they intended to spell.  They are spelling using the only strategy they’ve been taught:  Sound it out.  And if we started naming words that are similarly difficult to spell accurately using only “sound it out”, we could name quite a few.  Don’t you agree?  So what now?  If the problem isn’t phonics, what is it?

Well, what if,  when we were teaching our students that graphemes represent pronunciation, we also taught them that words have structure?  What if the students were taught to look at this word and recognize that <go> is at the heart of its meaning?  We could teach them that this word starts with its base element, <go>, and if we want to form other words using this same base element, we could add suffixes.  If the child is learning the spelling of <goes>, he/she is probably familiar with the words <going> and <gone> as well.  We could teach the student that <go + es  is rewritten as goes>, that <go + ing is rewritten as going> , and that <go + ne is rewritten as gone>.

If we look at other word families in this same way, it won’t take long before the student has learned some of the more commonly used suffixes and prefixes.  So even with early readers, recognizing some part of a word will help when encountering unfamiliar words.  When decoding, the student can focus on the base element in the word because they recognize a suffix they can remove.

So now let me show you what I am doing with fifth grade words.  We begin our science curriculum by studying the interactions of the biosphere, geosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere.  As an orthographer, I immediately noticed that this group of words shares a structure.  Focusing on that structure, I added lithosphere, troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and cosmosphere to the list.  I had the students investigate these words in small groups.

They are all compound words.  You can see the familiar base <sphere>.  Just in front of that base you’ll notice that each word has the connecting vowel <o>.  That leaves a rather unfamiliar looking base at the beginning of each word.  It looks unfamiliar because we have not been taught to recognize bound bases.  A bound base is not found as a word on its own.  It is always bound to another element in the word.  When we think of compound words, we think of words like chalkboard or hallway.  In those words we see two free bases joined together.  In biosphere, we have a bound base <bi> joined to a free base <sphere> by the connecting vowel <o>.  This <bi> is from Greek and has a denotation of “life”.  The second base <sphere> is from Greek too.  It has a denotation of “globe”.  So the biosphere is everything that is alive on our globe or planet.

It is great to  better understand a word by looking at its structure, history and the overall meaning we glean from paying attention to its elements. But if we stop there, we are only giving a student one more word to remember.  Instead, looking at a word’s relatives is how a student makes connections to other words and how a word’s meaning becomes memorable.  If we continue to look at <biosphere>, and focus on the first base <bi>, we can find words like <biographer> “someone who writes about other people’s lives”, <biohazard> “something that is dangerous to living things”, <biology> “the study of living things”, and <bioluminescent> “living organisms that emit light”.  Do you see how all of these words are connected in meaning?  If the students begin to recognize a base like <bi>, they will have a hint at what an unfamiliar word like <biometry> might mean.  At the very least they will know it has something to do with “life, living”.  If they also know the second base in this word (<meter>) has to do with measuring (geometry, diameter, speedometer, kilometer), they will put the two meanings together. They might still need clarification as to what it means to measure life, but a quick look at Etymonline will tell them that biometry is the calculation of a life expectancy.  A biometrist tries to calculate how long something (under certain conditions) might live!  Cool!

**At this point I encourage the parents to take a look at the posters in the hallway (once we have finished with the conference).  The posters show the various investigations by the students.  I feel it is important to also point out to the parents that when they look at the posters they should keep something in mind.  It is not my intention for the students to remember all of the words they find.  Rather, it is my intention for the students to realize how many words can be related to one base element and its shared denotation!  Then, of course, the students also begin to realize that all words have structure (morphology), and a history (etymology).

      

Next I showed parents the list of these words that was still on the whiteboard in the classroom.  The students had written the year each word was first attested next to its corresponding word.  It is my intention to have the students make a timeline to better organize the words and their attestation dates.  Then we’ll be able to talk about which word was around first and which was created most recently.  As it turns out, the word <atmosphere> was first attested in 1630.  It is interesting that the oldest of these is <atmosphere> “gaseous envelop surrounding the earth.”  It just goes to show how long scientists have been looking up and wondering about our atmosphere.

As the years passed and the technology became more advanced,  scientists were able to detect differences in different areas of the atmosphere.  It became important to be more precise in what they called things.  I find it interesting that the specific layers of the atmosphere were named so recently.  It began with the stratosphere in 1908, the troposphere in 1914, the thermosphere in 1924, and the mesosphere in 1950. You can almost imagine the scientists making their observations and then realizing that the atmosphere was actually made up of layers, each with unique properties.  And as there was a need to fittingly name each layer, they looked to the classical languages (Greek and Latin) for appropriate elements!

The next topic we discussed was the teaching of Chancery Script.  My goal is for the students to have consistent and legible writing that also reflects their personal style.  I have fountain pens that we use when practicing.  We focus on writing posture and a comfortable pen hold (as opposed to a tense grip).  Again, I direct the parents to stop on their way out and see the examples I have posted in the hall.

When I moved on to what the students were learning in science, we ended up weaving in orthography once more!  As we’ve taken a closer look at the biosphere, we’ve learned about food chains and food webs.  The Photosynthesis Play we recently performed for the school, gave us a good start in understanding that the sun provides the energy for photosynthesis.  In fact, the word <photosynthesis> means “put together with light”.  It is the Greek base <phote> that means light.  We see this base in photography, photojournalism, photocopy, and phototropism (since we’ve studied the word <troposphere>, we know that phototropism has to do with a plant turning towards the light).  We have also studied the word <synthetic> and we use it often when we write synthetic word sums.  We know that a synthetic word sum is one in which we put the elements together to form a completed word.

Because of our previous understanding of the words <synthetic> and <phototropism>, we could more easily understand that <photosynthesis> would be a combination of those meanings “put together with light”.  Quite by coincidence, a few days later we were watching a video that further explained food webs and trophic levels.  The narrator in the video spoke about photosynthesis (the process in which a plant produces its own food), but then added that some bacteria are too far from the sunlight’s energy, and so produce their own food using chemosynthesis.  Without skipping a beat, several students raised their hands and excitedly explained that chemosynthesis would mean “put together with chemicals!”

I love presenting words to the students that I know they will be unfamiliar with, but that share a base we have talked about.  In this way, I am teaching the students to look for familiar elements in a word.  Of course, I also teach them that while creating a hypothesis about a word’s structure is a great thing to do, checking a reliable source to confirm or falsify that hypothesis is a responsible habit to form!  To this end, we use many etymological and regular dictionaries on a daily basis.

The study of food chains, food webs, and trophic levels exposes the students to many great words and word families.  If the organism makes its own food, it is a producer.  If it eats the producers, it is an herbivore.  If it eats an herbivore, it is a carnivore.  If it eats both producers and carnivores, it is an omnivore.  If the organism has no natural predators, it is a top predator.  If it is not a producer, it is a consumer.  If it eats an organism’s waste, it is a detritivore.  If it helps break down a dead organism it is a decomposer.

So how do I help my students understand those words when there are so many?  We look for related words.  We look at their structure.  We look at their histories.

This first matrix shows how carnivore, detritivore, herbivore, and omnivore are compound words and share a structure.  They also share the base <vore> “devour”.  As you can see, the words voracious and voracity are also represented on this matrix.  The students may not know these words, but it makes sense to introduce them as other members of this family.  It deepens the connections being made.  I might even ask them to name a time they had a voracious appetite!

In this matrix I’ve chosen to include three related words (with options for suffixing).  I am illustrating this base in other words besides the one we are focusing on in our study (producer), but I choose not to overwhelm the students with too many unfamiliar words this time.

In this matrix, I am sticking to one word and its suffixing options.  I use a matrix like this to practice the suffixing convention of replacing the single final non-syllabic <e>.  I also use it to point out that suffixes can have grammatical functions.

As we are finishing up our time together, I once again point the parents to the display that is up in the hallway.  It shows our work with food chains and the terminology being learned.

***The parents were very interested to know what their child was learning.  Several expressed their own frustrations with spelling, and wished they had been taught these things.  A few with younger children were hoping that other classrooms were teaching orthography as well.

Just before getting up to leave, one mom turned to me and said, I have something I just have to share with you.  I think that because of what you’ve been explaining  about orthography tonight, I finally understand a conversation I had with my older daughter (the one that was in my class three years ago).

My daughter and I went round and round a while ago.  I was asking her how to spell a word.  She said, “What does it mean?”
I said, “I don’t know.”
She said, “I can’t tell you how to spell the word if I don’t know what it means.”
I gave her a surprised look.  “What?” I said, “I never knew what words meant. I just memorized how to spell them.”
She looked back at me even more surprised.  “That makes no sense!  You need to know what it means before you can understand how to spell it!”

That just made my day!  Spelling represents meaning.  My former student knew that, but her mom didn’t get it until this conference night.  I’d say it was a night well spent!

Here’s a final touch.  I had this on the whiteboard at the front of my room just in case anyone stopped to take a look.

Some Sums Are Worth Practicing!

Today we focused on the importance of a word sum, and how a word sum is to be read. I picked the base element <joy> to work with because I was confident that  the students would be able to brainstorm a list of words that are morphological relatives of <joy>.  A morphological relative shares the spelling of the base and the denotation (is from the same etymological root).

As the students thought of words, I wrote them in a column to the right. When we had a good sized list, I asked if anyone could give me a word sum for one of the words. At this point, I emphasized that the base element was <joy> and could not be made smaller without losing its sense and meaning. I compared writing a word as a word sum to splitting a spelling into syllables. Syllables carry no meaning, but morphemes do. Syllables may or may not help you with pronunciation, but a word sum will always help you understand a word’s meaning. You will find words written as syllables in most dictionaries. There is no internet site or dictionary that lists word sums.  Word sums have to be reasoned out by you!

This last bit is extremely important.  Students are used to finding answers in books or on the internet.  They are used to answer keys with which to check their work.  At first they feel confused by word sum hypotheses.  That happens because they have not been exposed to enough word sums.  With time, they begin to notice patterns and recognizable clues which in turn help them write a more likely initial word sum hypothesis.  Through experience working with word sums, they better understand that all words have structure. They become less nervous in proposing a word sum hypothesis and instead are actually excited at the prospect.  Some of my past 5th grade students have said that proposing word sum hypotheses was one of their favorite parts of orthography!

As the students hypothesized each word as a word sum, I wrote the word sum along with the ‘is rewritten’ arrow to the left of each word. That way I had the full word sum represented for each word.

Next I modeled how I wanted each word sum read. I’ll use the first word as an example: <j..o..y  plus  ful  is rewritten as  j..o..y  (pause)  ful> … joyful.  The natural tendency was to pronounce the elements as if they were words. Changing that tendency was part of what today’s practice was all about.  We don’t pronounce elements until until the word is complete.  Since a word sum is a visual representation of the composing of a word, nothing is ready to be pronounced because the word is not completed.  Everything is spelled out.  I also encourage the students to announce the spelling of the suffixes a bit quicker than they do the spelling of the base elements.  I want them to think of the suffixes that they will be seeing often as recognizable units.  I want them to rattle off, for instance, suffixes such as <-ing>, <-ed>, <-ous>, <-ly>, and <-ic>.  Then when they are in the midst of spelling a word on paper, the spelling of that suffix is in their head and there is less chance of leaving a letter off.

A few other things came up as we looked over this list.  We talked about the difference in spelling between <-ful> the suffix and <full> the free base word.  I introduced the idea of announcing the suffix <-ness> as <n..e..double s>.  It was also an introduction to looking at what each element in a word sum contributed to the overall sense and meaning of the completed word.

I showed them a chart that would be at the board to remind them of the types of elements we might see in a word sum.  I pointed out that bases and affixes are written morphemes.  In the first few weeks of school, we have been talking about the difference between a base that is free and a base that is bound.  The students will be investigating twin bases later in the year.  Since the students (in groups of 2-3) have already begun investigating science words, we have also talked a bit about everything else on this poster.  Each small group is investigating a word similar in structure to <biosphere>.  Each word is compound with <sphere> as its second base.  Each word also has a connecting vowel – in this case an <o> because one or both bases in their compound word are Hellenic (from Greek).

I started at one end of the room, and asked each student to read a word sum and finish by pronouncing the completed word. When we came to the bottom of the list, we started over.  In that way, every child was able to individually read a word sum. In listening to the readings, the process became familiar to all.  This is a practice I will continue doing throughout the year when we collect any list of morphological relatives.  Hearing themselves announce the word sum will help this idea of a word sum become part of what they understand about all words.   When they are writing and asking themselves how to spell <really>, I want them to remember that the base is <real> and they are adding the suffix <ly> to it to form the word <really>.

A few students inadvertently said “equals” instead of “is rewritten as” when they saw the arrow. That was a great opportunity to compare a word sum to a math equation and to point out the use of “sum” in our use of “word sum”.

I also used this opportunity to talk about the difference between a synthetic word sum and an analytic word sum. I pointed to the poster card I now have on my board to remind them of these new terms and what they mean. (Check out the store tab on my blog if you are interested in a set of my cards. 🙂) I explained that the word <synthetic> means to put together and the word <analytic> means to loosen. So a synthetic word sum is the kind of word sum that begins with elements and combines them (puts them together) to form a complete word. An analytic word sum is the kind of word sum that begins with a completed word and loosens it into its elements.

I told my students that my goal is for them to spell a word by its morphemes.  I want to replace the often torturous memorization of “letter letter letter” type sequences with knowing that a word has, for instance, a base <joy>, a suffix <ful>, and another suffix <ly>.  This will not be accomplished by sounding out words, but rather by learning about structure and repeatedly seeing and using some common affixes and bases.

The students enjoyed this activity and asked if we could do it again sometime.  Yes.  We can and will do it many many times!  I promise!

We’ve enlarged our understanding this day – that’s for sure!

On Friday I chose the word ‘large’.  I wrote it on the board with a denotation of “big” underneath.  I read seven words, using each in a sentence so the student wouldn’t have to rely on my isolated  pronunciation alone.  They heard it in context and that helped with understanding its meaning and grammatical use.

I asked the students to write either a synthetic word sum or an analytic word sum on their paper for each word.

After I collected the papers, the students volunteered to write their word sum on the board.  If there was a question about any of them, it was asked and explained by fellow students before we went on to announce the word sums.

The following video is an example of the way students announce and explain word sums.  It was taken on a different day with a different base, but gives you the idea of what I mean by “announcing the word sum.”

When I looked at the collected papers over the weekend, I noticed that very few recognized an <en-> prefix.  Most assumed it was an <in-> prefix.  But why wasn’t it an <in-> prefix?  That is something I never thought about before!

So today I started class with the word ‘enlarged’ on the board.  My first question to the students was, “Why is there a final non-syllabic <e> here?  What is its job in this word?”  My second question was, “Why is the prefix an <en-> and not an <in->?  What followed was so delightful that I just had to share by writing this post!

Why is there a final non-syllabic <e> in <enlarge>?

I called on Tyler, and he said, “Well, I have two ideas.  It might be there so we know how to say the <a>, or else it might be there so we say /dʒ/ at the end.”
“Interesting.”  I spoke to the rest of the class.  “What do you think about what Tyler just said?”
“I agree that the <g> is pronounced /dʒ/ if the <e> is there.”

So I asked for some words that have a final <g>.  I wanted them to compare the pronunciation of a final <g> in a word to a final <ge>.  Some of the suggested words were flag, frog, dog, and drag.  The difference in pronunciation (/g/ in flag and /dʒ/ in large) was quite noticeable.

Next I had them pull out their orthography notebooks and turn to the page where we are keeping track of the different jobs a final non-syllabic <e> might have.  We added that a final non-syllabic <e> can affect the pronunciation of the preceding letter <g>.

Then we went back to address Tyler’s other idea.  “Is it possible that this <e> is also affecting the pronunciation of the <a> in this word?”
A student responded with, “I don’t think so.”
I asked, “Can you name a word where the final non-syllabic <e>is clearly affecting the pronunciation of the previous vowel?”
The student replied with “Cake.  The <a> in enlarge is not being pronounced like the <a> in cake.”

Excellent.  Time to move on to my second question to the class.

 

Why is the prefix an <en-> and not an <in->?

First off I stopped and thanked everyone.  “If so many of you hadn’t used <in-> instead of <en->, I wouldn’t have questioned it.  I knew this prefix was <en-> because I knew the word and its spelling.  Until this weekend, I never thought to stop and wonder why it isn’t <in->.  Don’t ever forget.  You aren’t the only ones learning about words in this classroom.  I am learning with you.  I constantly learn interesting stories that I wouldn’t have found without the questions being asked, the analysis being wondered about, or without the mistakes being made!  We are in this together!”

Then we went to Etymonline and looked at ‘enlarge’.  Fascinating.  This word was first attested in the mid-14th century.  At that time it meant “grow fat, increase”.  We stopped and noted that we still use it to mean that.  Then we kept reading.  It was borrowed from Old French enlargier, enlargir “make large”  (en- make + large large).  How interesting that the word itself meant (and still does) “make large”!  I noticed that in the entry, the <en-> was bolded, so I clicked on it to learn more about the <en-> prefix.

It means “in; into” and is from French and Old French <en->.  (We recognized that ‘enlarge’ had been from Old French.  We knew we were looking at the same <en->.)  Before that it was borrowed from Latin <in-> “in, into”!  What do you know?  Reading further we found out that Latin <in-> became <en-> in French, Spanish, and Portuguese.  It remained <in-> in Italian.

“I wonder if Sarah knows the Italian word for ‘enlarge’ and if it begins with an <in-> prefix,”  a few asked all at once.  (We are fortunate to have a student who moved from Italy to the United States just before school started.  She knew a little English, but not very much).  Sarah has been loving our word studies and when I saw her in the next class, I asked her about the Italian word similar to the English word ‘enlarge’.  She wrote on the board:

I asked, “Who understands how this word is similar to enlarge?”

Right away a bunch of hands went up.  “I see ‘grand’ in there.  Something that is grand (like a grand prize) is big!”  How cool!  Three months ago, they would not have seen that.  They are looking at words in a new way.  They are looking, expecting to see something that will make sense!  I love it!

At the bottom of the page there was a tab that said, “See all related words (126)”.  How common is the <en-> prefix we wondered?

What a treasure trove!  Students read out the words that were familiar — words like enact, embrace, and empower.  The fact that in some words the <en-> has assimilated to <em-> was not earthshaking.  We continually run into assimilated prefixes and talk about them.  We moved on to page two.  On this page they spotted encourage, enjoy, endanger, engage, and yes, enlarge!  A few had questions about what some of the words meant.

Then Ella asked about energy.  “What would the word sum for energy be?”  she wondered.
“Thank you for that brilliant question,” I responded.  “You are thinking like an orthographer!”

Because the word was on this list, we wrote the following word sum hypothesis with <en-> as a prefix:
<en + erg + y>

Then I had a student look it up in my Chambers Dictionary of Etymology.  We found that it was borrowed from Middle French énergie.  Before that it was borrowed directly from Late Latin energia, and before that it was from Greek enérgeia “activity, orperation”  (en-  “in”  +  érgon “work”).

Rylee asked what other words have this <erg> base.  At Etymonline I found ergonomics – “the study of the efficiency of people in the work place” as well as ergophobia – “the fear of work”!

Ella’s hand went up again.  “What would the word sum for environment be?”  I smiled big.
“Great question!  What do you think it would be?  Do you see a prefix you recognize?  Do you see a suffix you recognize?”
Ella offered this:  <en- + viron + ment>.  We looked it up.  We found out that the noun ‘environment’ is not as old as the verb ‘environ’, which was first attested in the late 14th century.   The base is <viron> and has a denotation of “circle”.  So an environment is a surrounding area, an area that is encircled.

I threw in that I had learned over the weekend (Scholarship Sunday) that many words with an <-ment> suffix are abstract nouns.  The word ‘environment’ certainly fit that.  There was an interesting discussion about this word.  Couldn’t you go out into the environment and touch it?  Wouldn’t that make it a concrete noun?  Hmmm.  Could you really touch the environment, or could you touch only a component of the environment?  In the end it was decided that environment was indeed an abstract noun.  Other words with an <-ment> suffix were suggested such as argument, comment, and government.  These were certainly abstract nouns.  What an interesting thing to keep in mind as we continue investigating and thinking about words!

We continued looking through the list of words related to <en-> at Etymonline.  The best was the last word listed – ‘ink’.  The immediate question was, “Would the word sum be <in- + k>?”
“Let’s revisit your question after we read a bit.”

I was able to introduce Samuel Johnson as the entry began with his definition of ink as, “The black liquor with which men write.”  I wondered if liquor had a different sense then, so I looked in his dictionary and found that he defined liquor as “anything liquid”. He was quite an interesting dictionary writer!  In case you are unfamiliar with Samuel Johnson, he published his dictionary in 1755.  It took him 7 years to complete.  Other dictionaries that existed at the time tended to include words considered to be hard and/or hardly used.  His dictionary focused on the words in use at the time and on the way they were used.  It was considered THE dictionary until the Oxford English Dictionary was published.

Besides that, we noticed that where the rest of these related words began with an <in> that later became <en>, this word began with the <en> spelling and in PDE has an <in>!  It began as  Old French enche, encre.  Prior to that it was from Late Latin encaustum, and prior to that it was borrowed from Greek enkauston.  What was so interesting was the denotation of the Hellenic etymon kaiein “burn”.  We’re talking about ink, right?  What does an etymon meaning “burn” have to do with it?

Well, it seems that this is referring to a purple-red ink used by the Greek and Roman emperors for their signatures that was prepared with heat.  Etymonline states, “It was the name of the purple-red ink, the sacrum encaustum, used by the Roman emperors to sign their documents; this was said to have been obtained from the ground remains of certain shellfish, formed into writing fluid by the application of fire or heat, which explained the name. In the Code of Justinian, the making of it for common uses, or by common persons, was prohibited under penalty of death and confiscation of goods.”

Wow.  We tried to imagine how a liquid could be obtained in this manner!  Or why people would even try to make it if the punishment was so severe!

It was time to revisit the question, “Would the word sum for ink be <in- + k>?”  After having read and discussed the entry, the student didn’t think so.  There wasn’t any evidence of a <k> base.  But boy, oh, boy! What an interesting story!

 

This is how learning about our language can go.  One day you plan something to do, and because of what gets noticed during the course of your plan, several other learning opportunities appear.  It is all good, of course, but the unplanned discoveries are the best!  We all (teacher included) leave the room smiling.