Education Week - April 13, 2016 - 14

Young Students
Use Greek, Latin
To Unlock Words
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Photos by Dustin Franz for Education Week

a way to play with language and see it as
something they can reason through. "It makes
them more aware of words, that words hold
meaning, and that the language is purposeful," said Emily Ulrich, a 4th grade teacher at
Woodlawn, who has been using the approach
for three years. "It gives them confidence, too,
when they're reading and they see parts of
words they're familiar with."
The exchange between Ford and Rusk
about temp (which, by the way, is not the root
of temptation) mirrored the kinds of conversations the teachers were hoping to inspire
in their own classrooms. And in many classrooms, it seems to be working-students are
finding root words in their group and silent
reading, chatting with their peers about what
words could mean, and bringing words they're
curious about to class.
"It's a paradigm shift in the way we teach
vocabulary," said Newton.

ABOVE: First grade students respond during
a lesson on Latin and Greek roots in Diane
MacBride's classroom at Hatton Community
Learning Center in Akron, Ohio.

'Breaking the Code'
A group of Ohio professors from Kent State
University and the University of Akron-Timothy Rasinski, Nancy Padak, Rick M. Newton,
and Evangeline Newton-wrote the 2008
book, Greek and Latin Roots, and designed an
accompanying curriculum, which some teachers in Fairfax and other schools around the
country are using. (Woodlawn's Newton is the
daughter of Rick and Evangeline Newton.)
According to Rasinski, a literacy education
professor at Kent State, teaching young students about morphology (the study of word
forms) and word patterns improves their ability to gain meaning from unfamiliar words,
which helps with reading overall. "This is
one of the most promising ways for developing word knowledge," he said. "Anybody who's
ever taken Latin in high school sees how
profoundly it's affected English and can help
build vocabulary."
Latin class has long been a staple in high
schools, but the idea of teaching Latin in elementary schools isn't new either. In a 1984
Commentary piece for Education Week, Rudolph Masciantonio, then an administrator
in the office of curriculum for the Philadelphia school district, wrote about efforts in
Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Los Angeles,
and other cities to teach Latin to young students. "Educators have long believed that a
pupil who knows the Latin roots, prefixes,
and suffixes has the keys to unlock the
meaning of countless English derivatives
and cognates," he wrote.
However, some teachers using root words
now say they don't focus too much on the idea
of introducing a whole new language, which
can seem overwhelming. "I don't think [students] see it as 'I'm learning Latin,' " said
Chris Schmidt, a 3rd-5th grade gifted education teacher in North Carolina's Buncombe
County district. He uses a program called
Caesar's English to teach vocabulary with
Greek and Latin roots. "They see it more as a
puzzle. 'This is something I'm trying to figure
out. There's a code in here, and I'm trying to
break that code.' "
In many traditional elementary classrooms,
students get a list of words to master by the
end of the week-perhaps 10 or 20. But in
classes using Latin and Greek stems, students often only study one root word per week.
From there, they build out dozens of words as
a class, and students look for words on their
own in other contexts.

Aubrey Eisele, a 1st grade student at Hatton,
works on a root-word exercise during class.

Many of the activities students do with
those root words involve creativity and inquiry. A task called "odd word out," designed
by Rasinski and his colleagues, asks students to figure out which word is different
in a set. Sometimes a set will include a word
that doesn't use the same root. But often,
there is no clear right answer. For instance,
students might see the words "precook,"
"preheat," "premixed," and "pretest." One student might say pretest is different because
it doesn't have to do with cooking. Another
might choose premixed because it's the only
one with an -ed ending.
"The conversations students have with each
other, that's really that reasoning we're after,"
said Rosemary Floccari, an instructional coach
for Akron public schools, who learned about
the approach while taking courses at the University of Akron several years ago, and now
leads professional development on it.
During a lesson on roots one morning,
Ulrich asked her students to figure out the
definitions of made-up words. She showed them
a story she'd written in which the father was
referred to as an "unporter" because he didn't
help bring the groceries inside the house. The
students had learned that the prefix un meant
not, and port meant to carry. Then Ulrich had
students make up their own words using prefixes, suffixes, and roots they had learned.
"I wanted to reiterate that each of these
parts hold meaning, and when you move them
around it does affect the meaning of the word,"
she said in an interview after the lesson.
Newton said that, while teachers shouldn't
use a steady diet of nonsense words, that kind

14 | EDUCATION WEEK | April 13, 2016 | www.edweek.org

of activity can make for an engaging and helpful review of learned roots. "We want to show
the kids how those bases can connect, that
they're the building blocks of words," she said.
Between 2014 and 2015, Woodlawn saw
increases in its standardized test scores for
reading, particularly at the grades in which
most teachers were using Latin and Greek
roots. (The percentage of 4th graders passing
went up by 28 percent, and for 5th grade, it
rose 19 percent.) However, Newton was reluctant to attribute the gains to the vocabulary
approach, since it wasn't formally required
and because of the many other school factors
that may have contributed.

False Etymologies
The approach is seemingly in contrast to
another vocabulary instructional method
that's gained prominence recently: teaching
words in context, through thematic units that
build background knowledge. Some reading
experts, including those who helped write the
Common Core State Standards, say the best
way to learn new words is by learning about
individual topics deeply.
Schmidt, the Buncombe County gifted education teacher, agrees that teaching in context is ideal, and he has students apply their
roots in research projects. But overall, he said,
learning roots individually is a timesaver.
"Sometimes, it's just expediency," he said.
"One of the lasting things the kids take from
Caesar's English is the fact that when you learn
one stem you have some knowledge of countless
words, and that hooks them," he said.

The common core does ask students to learn
common Latin prefixes, suffixes, and roots as
part of its language standards starting in 3rd
grade. But some educators say the vocabularybuilding approach is useful even for students
who are in the early stages of reading.
Diane MacBride, a veteran 1st grade
teacher in the Akron school district, went to a
professional-development session on teaching
Latin and Greek roots three years ago and has
been using the method ever since.
"I thought this would be a great way to develop the kids and help them take control of
their learning," she said. "Having conversations about words in 1st grade is huge. It's
amazing to watch."
With her students, a root word often takes
two weeks, rather than one, to fully learn.
"That was definitely one of the challenges-I
was trying to do it too fast in the beginning,"
she said. "We weren't going deep enough."
She said her students get excited when
they see the roots they've learned in a book
they're reading on their own. And the roots
have helped in other subjects-for instance,
students picked up on what regrouping meant
in math quickly because they'd learned the
prefix re.
One challenge with the approach is that students at all grade levels often stumble on false
etymologies. A student who learned the prefix
un, for example, might think it applies to the
word "uncle." But teachers say that kind of
mistake can lead to productive conversation-
the kind the Virginia teachers were engaging
in at their after-school book study meeting.
During that meeting, the Woodlawn teachers also discussed what to do in a common,
yet even more thorny scenario-when even
the teacher is stumped by a word's etymology.
"You don't have to own all this knowledge,"
Newton told the group. "You can put 'words we
want to know more about' on the board and
say, 'Does someone want to go home tonight
and look up some of these words?' We're sharing that ambiguity with kids. ... That's what
real readers and thinkers do."
Visit the CURRICULUM MATTERS blog, which tracks news and
trends on this issue. www.edweek.org/blogs

http://www.edweek.org/blogs http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - April 13, 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - April 13, 2016