A Symphony of Suffixes

When I sat down to lunch with my grade level team today, I was bubbling over with satisfaction after a rich and wonderful discussion that had just taken place in my room.  I couldn’t help myself.  I had to share what had just happened.  I was too excited.

As I sometimes do, I wrote a word on the board and was asking the students to take a minute to think of what the word sum might be.  I was looking for a hypothesis.  From there we would see where the conversation went.

The word I began with today was <scientist>.

I made sure I gave time for the students to think about it.  I have a few students whose hand shoots up automatically, and when I call on them, they need to pause to think of their response.  You too?  Then I also have a consistent core group of students who love to participate, and who, once they’ve thought about it, raise their hand in order to share.  And then there are the rest of the students who watch and wait.  They tend to keep their hands by their sides and their eyes looking down.  I recognize that some are feeling unsure, but it is so important to participate in the discussion.  Today I felt that this question could be asked of one of the students in this third group.  I looked over the group and chose carefully.  The student I called on thought for a moment and then suggested <sci + en + tist>.

Me: “That’s very interesting.  Thank you for that.  What do the rest of you think about Vanessa’s hypothesis?  Is there a part of it that you have seen before in another word?  Do you recognize any affixes you’ve seen before?”

Student: “I kind of think that it isn’t <tist>, but rather <ist> at the end.”

Me: “Can you think of another word with <ist> at the end?  If we can, we will have collected some evidence that the <ist> is a suffix.”

One of the students who is usually reluctant to raise his hand, raised his hand.  I called on him.  He said, “Mist?”

Me: “Oooooo.  Now that’s an interesting word.  I want to come back to that word in a minute.  Thank you for thinking of it.”  I called on another student whose hand was raised.

Student: “I was thinking of biologist. ”

As I was writing ‘biologist’ on the board, other words were being called out.  I wrote them down as fast as I could.  There was paleontologist, archeologist, arsonist, tribologist, and zoologist.  And almost before I could finish writing the last word, a student blurted.  “Hey!  Almost all of them have an <log> before the <ist>!”

Me: “Brilliant!  Scholars are people who notice things!  Thank you for noticing that.  Can anyone tell me what a biologist is?”

Student: “It’s someone who studies living things.”

Student: “And the <o>’s a connecting vowel, isn’t it?”  (The student was referring to the <o> that follows the <bi> base.  We had looked at ‘biosphere’ earlier in the year.)

Me: “It sure is!”

Student: “And isn’t a paleontologist someone who studies fossils?”

Me: “Yes.  And an archeologist?”

Students said they heard of it, but no one knew what exactly an archeologist studied.  So I told them that this person would be studying old times and ancient civilizations.  At this point, a student who hadn’t previously joined the discussion raised his hand and said, “What’s an arsonist?”

The person who had suggested the word replied, “A person who starts fires.”  There were a few confused by that.  I could tell by their facial reactions.  I went on to say that there are people fascinated by fire and they start fires to watch how the fire travels.  Then I added that sometimes other people get hurt either fighting these fires or because they got caught in the fire.  Arsonists usually get in trouble for starting fires.

When we were ready to look at the next word, at least three people spoke at once and explained that a tribologist was a person who studied rubbing things together.  Yes, it’s true.  About a week and a half ago, we watched a TED video about Jennifer Vail, a tribologist.  She is really quite fascinating.  Obviously the students thought so too because they suggested this word and remembered a lot about the video too!  Click HERE for a link to the video in case you are intrigued.

Lastly, someone identified a zoologist as someone who studies animals.

Me: “I notice that all of these words have an <-ist> suffix, and they each refer to a person.  We call that kind of suffix an agent suffix.  There are others, but for today we are noticing this one, the <-ist> suffix.”

At this point I went back to the word <mist>.  I asked if <mist> belonged on this list.  I asked if it was referring to a person?  The student who had suggested it, said that it did not fit.  I followed up by saying that the <ist> in mist is like the <ing> in sing.  Neither are suffixes.  They are coincidences of spelling.

Me: “If the <-ist> suffix is the part of the word that tells us this word is referring to a person, which part of the word is telling us that the person studies something?”

Student: “The <log>?”

Me:  “Excellent.  So notice now that the biologist is the person who studies living things and the paleontologist is the person who studies fossils, but the arsonist is the person who starts the fire.  It is NOT the person who studies fires.  Right?  There’s no <log> in that word.  And so the scientist is the person who does the science just like an artist is the person who does the art!  <Loge> is a bound base with a denotation of “science of.”  We usually think of it having to do with studying the science of something.  That makes every word up here with <log> in it a compound word!  Awesome thinking everyone!  Now let’s get back to the word we started looking at, <scientist>.  We’ve figured out that the <-ist> is a suffix.  What are your thoughts about the rest of the word?”

Student:  “Well, I’m thinking about <science> and wondering if what happens is that when the <-ist> suffix is added to <scient>, the <t> changes to <ce>?”

Me:  “Interesting.  The suffixing changes I have seen are a final consonant being doubled, a <y> changing to an <i>, and a single, final, non-syllabic <e> being replaced.  I haven’t ever seen a change like you are describing.  Could it be that <ent> and <ence> are both suffixes and are used to get two forms of the word?  Can anyone think of a word with an <ence> suffix?”

Student:  “Coincidence!  You just said that the <ist> in <mist> was a coincidence of spelling!”

Me:  “So I did. Can anyone think of another word?  The more words we can think of the more evidence we have.”

Student:  “Evidence.  You just said the word evidence!”

Me:  “That is so funny.  I surely did!”

Student:  “How about violence?”

Student:  “How about brilliance?”

Student: “Brilliance is spelled with an <-ance>.”

Me:  “Right.  Brilliance does have an <-ance>.  I’ll write it to the side in case we think of more like that.”

Student: “And silence.”

And then it dawned on me.  And I pointed out that we can switch out the <-ence> suffix in ‘coincidence’ for <-ent> and make the word ‘coincidental’.  We can switch out the <-ence> suffix in ‘evidence’ with the <-ent> suffix and make the word ‘evidently’.  At this point the students began to anticipate that ‘violence’ could be ‘violent’ and ‘silence’ could be ‘silent’.  So we decided that the suffixes <-ence> and <-ent> can work with the same base.  And of course we thought about <-ance> and <-ant> having the same kind of relationship.

Student:  “Could it be that these suffixes are different forms of the same suffix, kind of like the assimilated prefixes we are studying?”

Me:  “That’s something to think about, isn’t it?”

I will admit that the last question put the biggest smile on my face.  I love that the students are making connections to what else they are learning about English spelling.  I love that they are asking questions and getting caught up in these classroom discussions.  It was so much fun!  I’m beginning to recognize that from February to June is my favorite time of the year.  This is when the pieces start to fit together and the understandings start falling into place.  The students start having words on their minds all the time.  Here is a picture of the board.  You will recognize how everything ended up where it did from my description above.  You may also recognize that I misspelled paleontology.  I didn’t notice that until tonight when I was looking back at the picture.

All of the above happened with the second class I see during my day.  There was one more group to come in.  They needed to take this journey for themselves, so I erased the board and started all over.  Different words were suggested, but the ending observations were the same.

Now I want to take you back to my lunchtime discussion with my grade level colleagues.  As I was going on about what the students were thinking of and what we were noticing as a class, I could tell that it was one of those times “you had to be there.”  They weren’t feeling as excited as I was.  They listened and followed along, but didn’t get why this was such a big deal for me.  And then one of them said something that explained her perspective to me perfectly.  She said, “That’s just it.  If some words can have an <-ence> and some can have an <-ance>, how will our struggling spellers know which one to use?  What can you tell them so they know which one to use?”

She is used to false rules that focus on what is on the surface of a word without having to really know much about the word.  I told her that we would need to know more about the word’s etymology to know which to use.  In the meantime, the understanding gained today will help if, for example, the student can spell ‘silent’, and want to spell ‘silence.’  Instead of phonetically spelling it as *silints (which they may do anyway – phonics runs deep), they have a chance of knowing that it will have an <-ence> suffix.  I have no magic fix-it fairy dust.  I just keep letting students see for themselves what is really happening in spelling and how consistent it is. Progress comes more slowly than others would like, but that is because instead of “know this by Friday for the test”, I am not telling students what to know.  I let them see for themselves.  I give them time to let things sink in. We revisit concepts often and hope that much of the understandings they develop here, will be theirs for life.

I can hardly wait for tomorrow so I can take the discussion in this same direction with my first group.  We talked about some of these things this morning, but we didn’t take it in this direction.  I’d like to see what words they think of, and if they recognize for themselves what the other students recognized today.  Below is a picture of the board from the discussion I had with my last group of the day.  I love looking at this and knowing that between the three classes, we collect a lot of evidence to support what we understand about spelling.  That much is evident.  🙂

 

Explain How You Know It’s a Suffix!

The last few days the students have been working in pairs and trying to find and prove as many suffixes as they can.  I love this activity because over and over they are asked to explain their choices and elaborate on their thinking.  It sets the tone for the rest of the year.  I want them to experience that personal pride in being able to explain and defend one’s choices.  By doing so we deepen our thinking and weave each day’s investigations into a larger understanding of our language.

In this first film, Tyler is testing out the process he will become proficient at this year.  At first he is hesitant to come right out and make a choice.   I got the feeling he was fishing – waiting for me to tell him whether he was right or wrong.   But as I asked him questions and put the decision making back on him, I could feel him letting go of the notion that his answer must first and foremost be correct.  He began to see that logic and reasoning would help him make sense of whether the suffix in <adoption> was <-tion> or <-ion>.

The next student in this film is Ilsa.  She is playing around with structure.  She understands how the building blocks work and fit together.  Her word choices give us opportunity to be playful with words, and yet see the need to communicate meaning as well as structure.

In the next film Amanda is revealing what she understands about word structure.  In the word <daddy>, she knew that when removing the <-y> suffix, the base would not be <dadd>, but <dad>.  She also knew that in the word <user>, the suffix was an <-er>, and that the final <e> in the base <use> would not remain in place once the suffix was added.   The only things she was iffy on were the reasons why.

Hanna also understands that letters sometimes get doubled before a vowel, but she doesn’t sound too sure of when or why.  Calli is recognizing similarities in the words she found:  <graduation>, <innovation> and <irritation>.  At first she thought they each had a <-tion> suffix.  But when she actually went through the process of imagining the word without the final suffix, she realized the <t> had to be part of the base and not part of the suffix.  Kaitlyn proved that <-ive> was a suffix with the word <creative>.

As I walked around, I did mention that some of the words being looked at might have a prefix or another suffix besides the base.  The students nodded as if they understood that.  But then one of the suffixes that at least two groups identified was <-ier>.  They did not recognize that in the word <happier>, there are actually two suffixes.   In the weeks to come I will make sure they learn to investigate words to be more precise when identifying the base.  We have already created several large matrices on the board in which the students saw that a word could have several suffixes.  But today’s task was to focus on proving a final suffix and to be able to share our reasoning for our choices.

Taking on the Suffix Challenge!

After viewing a video of Dan Allen’s fifth graders taking on a “Suffix Challenge”, I was ready to have my students do the same.  My first thought was that I would find out how much they really understood about word structure.  My second thought was that we could begin the year with a nice collection of proven suffixes which would benefit the students throughout the year as they investigate words.  Beyond that I was open to anything that might surface.

Here were the instructions.  Each group of three or four students would get a large piece of construction paper and the use of both digital and hardcover dictionaries.  The task was to list as many suffixes as possible and to prove each suffix by listing at least three words that clearly had that suffix in their word sum.  The groups worked for 20 minutes on each of two days.  On day three, I gave each group a reflection sheet and a Suffix Challenge poster (NOT their own).  They were to discuss what they saw on the poster.  Which suffixes did the group believe were proven effectively?  Which suffixes did the group question?  Which example words did the group question?

So how do you actually prove that one or more letters at the end of a word is a suffix?  (We had previously had the discussion that a word can have more than one suffix, but for this activity we were focusing on the final suffix in a word.)  Well, I told them that if they could come up with three or more words that kept their meaning with or without the suffix, I would be convinced.  Many of the students began with familiar suffixes: <-ed>, <-s>, <-es>, and <-ing>.  As I circulated on the first day of the activity, I had the opportunity to see how little my students really understood about suffixes.  One group listed <-ing> as the suffix and the words <bling>, <fling>, and <ring> as words that prove it.  I wonder if this confusion is what comes of erroneously calling words that rhyme in this way  “the ing family”.  I asked this group to give me word sums for the word <ring>.  They quickly realized there was a problem.  I asked if the <-ing> suffix could be added to the word <ring>.  The light of recognition went off on one boy’s eyes, and I knew I could leave and check in with another group.

The day the students reflected on the other group’s poster was particularly fun.  The students were so engaged.  They were interested in the suffixes they themselves hadn’t thought of.  They enjoyed questioning aspects of the poster and then defending it.  I was amused when I heard several times, “We don’t even think this one is a word because we’ve never heard of it!”  I’ve learned so much in the last two years about responding to students during inquiry.  I simply said, “Well, how could you find out for sure?”  I have learned to simply put the inquiry back in their capable hands.

So many interesting things happened during this activity!  I realized that students are more familiar with dropping the single silent <e> when adding a vowel suffix and less familiar with replacing it when they remove that vowel suffix.  One group thought that <iced> and <sled> were not examples of an <-ed> suffix.  Their first response was to cover the <ed> part of the word and see what was left.  With the word <sled>, they were right.  The <ed> is part of the base and not a suffix.  But with the word <iced>, they didn’t recognize that the free base was <ice> and the suffix was <-ed>.

We had opportunity to talk about words in which the final <y> changed to <i> before added an <-es> suffix, as well as noticing that in some words the final consonant is doubled when adding a vowel suffix.  Those two conventions will be talked about again.  For now, my students are getting used to the ideas of explaining their thinking and defending their choices.

One last thought for those who want to try this in their classroom…  In addition to having the students list three example words under each suffix, have them write a word sum for each.  There was a lot of confusion about words in which the base had a final silent <e>.  By simply covering the suffix with their finger, they forgot to imagine that <e> in its place.  A word sum might help them with that.