Meet the Root-Word Spokes: Supply students with both the root and its corresponding definition. Offer them common words incorporating the root. Encourage group discussion to identify where the root's meaning manifests within each word, emphasizing comprehension of the root's significance. Distribute the "word spoke" graphic organizer, featuring the root at the center and several related words in the outer spokes. Prompt students to analyze how each listed word embodies the root's meaning. Establish a root word wall, enabling students to continually augment it with new findings from their diverse reading materials. CLICK HERE for an example

Divide and Conquer: This exercise facilitates students' comprehension of roots within words, enabling them to recognize and utilize them to decipher the meanings of unfamiliar terms. Students deconstruct words by identifying familiar prefixes, suffixes, and a shared base. Introducing a concise selection of cognate words serves as an effective starting point for this activity. By activating prior knowledge, educators draw attention to the root's ubiquitous presence in students' existing vocabularies, or alternatively, by emphasizing the prefixes present in some or all of the words, depending on students' familiarity. Through discussion, students explore the significance of the base and prefixes in determining meaning. Following this exploration, students are encouraged to consider figurative interpretations. This activity aims to redirect students' focus towards new roots by establishing connections with familiar words.  CLICK HERE for an example

The teaching progression continuum is a progression of skills that teach students how to comprehend and explain learned information. 

• Oral Response: Teach students to respond to questions verbally in complete sentences by using part of the question in their response> Provide low risk, non text based discussions prior to moving on to text based discussions. 

• Questioning Skills : Teach students to ask and answer their own questions. Students should write short 1 to 3 sentence responses to their own open ended, text based questions. Begin citing evidence, including peer comments. 

• Comprehending, Annotating, & Analyzing a Text: Teach students to annotate for understanding to analyze, and to make inferences by identifying and citing text evidence using the author's exact words and/or summarizing & paraphrasing the text. 

• Short Constructed Response: Teach students to identify the question(s) and reading concepts within an SCR prompt and to respond using clear, relevant text evidence. Students should be able to write short 2-5 sentence responses.

• Extended Constructed Response: Teach students to identify the question(s) and reading concepts within an ECR prompt and to  respond by writing multi- paragraph responses based on their inferential analysis of a text or sets of texts.