Expanding Vocabulary Through Spelling Exploration

This is my original copy of an article published in the Illinois Reading Council Journal 26 (3), Summer 1998

“I never knew one word could be connected to so many.” “You increased my vocabulary.” “Prefixes and suffixes could never be easier!” “We had a lot of fun!” These are just four of the comments made by fifth grade students after taking part in a classroom activity designed to expand their awareness of the English spelling system through exploring the Latin meaning root metrum (to measure). While spelling enrichment through demonstrating the relationships between words was the main goal, some expansion of individual children’s vocabularies was also anticipated, but teaching students about prefixes, suffixes, and parts of speech was not a part of the original plan.

This project emerged from a casual conversation between two teachers. We, a fifth grade classroom teacher and a retired educator, chanced to meet in the post office one morning and began to chat about students in a particular class. Jan’s class of 29 students, 17 girls and 12 boys, constituted approximately 20% of the total fifth grade enrollment in this school district, located in a far suburban, almost rural, area. A dozen of them had been in Grace’s first-grade group four years earlier.

We agreed that this class, previously identified for the A & E (Accelerated and Enrichment) program in their school, included some of the brightest and most enthusiastic students ever taught by either of us. Clearly, these students needed a challenge in the area of spelling instruction. Most of them already had a good mastery of the words offered in regular textbook spelling lessons. Our initial meeting led to brainstorming possibilities for spelling enrichment and the development of this activity. While the spelling root chosen might be more appropriate for students at a higher grade level, we felt that this group of students would accept the challenge and do well with it.

The lesson design:

Two weeks prior to the main activity, Jan explained to her students that they would become better spellers and would increase their language ability if they could see the connections between the spellings of words and their meanings. She planned a preliminary activity for six class sessions over the two week period. In the first session, she introduced the spelling root act. The children brainstormed ways they could build on this root by adding beginning consonants and blends as well as prefixes and suffixes. Each child was given a homework assignment to write all the words they could think of containing act. The next day the children met in cooperative groups to share their lists and create one master list in each group. It was important to do this the second day while student enthusiasm was high. Subsequent sessions were used for classifying these words into categories according to word meaning by using their prior knowledge of prefixes and suffixes. Examples of such lists are behavioral words (act, actor, acted, acting, react, reacting, reacted, enact, enactment) and words related to ‘broken’ (fraction, fracture, fractured, refract, refraction). It was necessary for the groups to defend their meaning relationships by using a dictionary.

The date chosen for the metrum activity coincided with the beginning of a mathematics geometry unit and both of us participated in its launching. Jan wrote the root “metrum” on a large sheet of newsprint. She wrote the definition, ‘to measure,’ behind the word and beneath it wrote and discussed examples such as geometry, meter, and metric. Children brainstormed other words using that root, listing fifteen words and using the dictionary to validate whether or not these really applied to the root metrum. Words that did not fit were crossed off the list and those that did fit were circled. Their homework assignment was to develop individual lists. Strategies for finding words included using dictionaries and encyclopedias and family conversations.

On the second day students met for twenty-five minutes in small groups to share their words and form composite lists. The third task was to classify words according to relationships. In their groups children chose different categories such as instruments for measuring, units of measurement, and careers. Others sorted them according to numbers of syllables or placed them in alphabetical order. On another day these lists were shared with the rest of the class and discussions took place about the relationships between words. A typical classification chart might include:

Instruments Units Careers

thermometer meter geometer

odometer kilometer metrician

barometer millimeter metrist

speedometer centimeter geometrician

hygrometer decameter metrologist

anemometer decimeter

metronome

micrometer

Toward the end of the activity both of us met again with the class to create a semantic feature analysis chart using the words they had found. An additional activity at that time was to have students find a particular word, metric, in the dictionary and to read aloud its definition. Here they found metrical and metrically listed in bold print. This definition also included related words as illustrations (i.e., chronometric or biometrically). Continuing to look at words adjacent to metric, we discovered metrication and metricize (-cized, -cizing). As we entered these words into our semantic feature analysis chart, three factors became evident. We were on a quest for new terms, we could see the pronunciation shifts as prefixes and suffixes were added to words, and we could begin to see the relationships between word spellings and grammatical usage.

Prefixes to our met words led to new dictionary searches. The search for chronometric yielded chronometer, chronometrical, chronometrically, and chronometry. Biometric led to biometrical, biometrically, biometrics, and biometrician. As we continued to research individual words, each of these provided more leads to expand our vocabulary list.

Shifts in pronunciation became evident. The shift from meter to metric tied the spelling of the met root to two vowel sounds. The m-e-t-e-r spelling in such words as barometer and odometer helped the children see that, although the sound and accent had changed, the spelling remained constant and that names for these instruments of measure derived from the original word meter. Moving from barometer to barometricillustrated the change in accent while spelling patterns remained consistent.

Listing the words according to spelling patterns yielded insights into parts of speech. The children discovered that words ending in -icand -ical were adjectives; those that ended with -cally were adverbs. Endings -cian ant -trist yielded nouns denoting people. We also found a category of words ending with -ing (metering, metricizing) which led to a mini-lesson on gerunds, usually a much higher grade concept but easy to explain and understand in this context. In addition to classifying parts of speech, these children learned that the adverbial suffix in metric words was always -cally.. Without the information gained through this activity, they may have well slurred over the cal in their speech and written metricly.

We all learned.

Sometimes we were really astounded by words the children provided. One girl volunteered the word sphygmomanometer as both of us dropped our jaws in surprise and learned the name of the instrument used to measure blood pressure. Another time a student approached Jan with the idea that there ought to be an instrument for measuring the depth of water. Some days later he reported, “I found it! It’s a Fathometer.” One word that led to a great deal of discussion was geometrid, more commonly known as an inch worm. Because the children insisted that its name was related to measurement, we accepted it as part of our list.

One of the strategies used by the children to find words, using dictionaries, led to writing down every word beginning with met, using a metric table in the dictionary, and discussing the assignment with their parents. In their enthusiasm to find met words the children often forgot the original assignment – that the meaning of their words had to relate to measurement – and words such as metallurgy, metamorphosis, and metropolitan crept into their lists. This led to a discussion of metal being an unrelated base word and the use of meta- and metro- as prefixes.

At the end of the project we asked the children to briefly jot down what they had learned from the activity. Beyond those quoted at the beginning of this article, their writings included statements as, “I learned how you can sort words into different groups,” “I now know that (some) adjectives end in ‘cal’ and that (some) adverbs end in ‘cally,’” “I learned how to find more words in a dictionary,” “I learned (that) by changing the suffixes of words, they became different parts of speech,” “After this experience I will learn to appreciate spelling more and more.” But perhaps the most important statement was, “We had a lot of fun!”

Beyond what the children learned in this exploration is what has happened to us as educators. We are convinced that we are forever changed in our awareness of this met root. Riding together to do an IRC presentation, as we were discussing our preparations for the trip, Jan said, “I did remember to bring my glucometer.” Grace simply burst out, “You brought your what?” as both of us laughed at our awareness of another word to add to our list.

Where do we go from here?

The possibilities are endless for using this activity with other roots. These may include both spelling roots and meaning roots. To assist children in discovering a list of words with limited spelling patterns, we also explored the spelling root ign. Children became aware of the relationship between sign and signal and of the pronunciation shift as the g and n became parts of separate syllables. Hunting for words containing the gh spelling pattern revealed the limited use of this letter combination along with its variant pronunciations of ough and provided a tool for helping students remember the orthography of gh words. An interesting root to research and divide into categories is mem from the Latin roots membrum (skin or parchment) and memor (mindful) which would lead to two completely different sets of related words.

Through using this activity we rediscovered the power of teaching and learning as children are put in control of their educational tasks. By shifting the authority from the teachers to students, all learned. Equally important, learning was and should be FUN!

Co-authors: Grace Vyduna-Haskins and Janice Lane