Teaching Word Learning Strategies

1. Teaching Word Learning Strategies Cynthia Santosuosso January 30, 2014

2. Objectives • Determine the different types of context clues • Deepen your personal knowledge of morphology • Learn classroom strategies to support students learning of new words • Context clues • Morphology

3. Common Core Connections

4. Teaching Word Learning Strategies

5. Teaching Word Learning Strategies Best to com-bine

6. What can effective word learners do? • Attack unknown words • Break words into their meaningful parts • Hypothesize meanings for larger words • Check the word meaning against the context of the text as well as their own background knowledge • Use their knowledge of high-frequency root words to access low-frequency words.

7. Context Clues

8. What are context clues? Context clues are the words, phrases, and sentences surrounding an unfamiliar word that can give hints or clues to its meaning.

9. Why Teach Context Clues? • Instruction in specific types of context clues is an effective approach for teaching students to use context to infer word meanings. (Reading Rockets)

10. What is the best way to teach context clues? Provide examples from content reading.

11. Types of Context Clues • Definition • Description • Synonym • Comparison • Contrast • Example

12. Type of Clue: Definition • Explanation: The word is defined directly in the sentence. • Example: The nation was undergoing urbanization-the movement of people into cities.

13. Type of Clue: Description • Explanation: The word is described by information in the context so that the reader can figure out the meaning. • Example: Pollination occurs when a pollen grain from a male plant lands on the stigma of a female plant.

14. Type of Clue: Synonym • Explanation: A word that is similar to the word is provided. • Example: Water soaks in the ground pores, or spaces, among the fragments of soil.

15. Type of Clue: Comparison • Explanation: The word is compared with other examples that are similar. • Example: Light enters your eye through a pupil, which is like a small hole.

16. Type of Clue: Contrast • Explanation: The word is contrasted with another word, usually an antonym. • Example: Unlike a compound, an element cannot be broken down into simpler materials.

17. Type of Clue: Example • Explanation: A word or words that are examples are provided. • Example: The children could tell, from Pete’s statement about everything and everybody having a good side, that he was an optimist.

18. Teach students:

19. Teach Students that Context Clues Cannot Always be Used! • Example: In order to gain active immunity to a disease, one of two things must occur-either you come down with the disease, or you receive a vaccination.

20. Your Turn! Can you determine each type of context clue?

21. Basics of Morphology

22. A large percentage of the words students learn after the third grade are derived words, such as discontinuous, that have a base word with one or more affixes that change the meaning and grammatical role of the word. (Carlisle 2007) • 60% of unfamiliar words middle school student encounter in books are derived words whose meaning could be figured out by analysis of word structure and their use in the passage. (Nagy and Anderson 1984)

23. What is Morphology? In language and reading, morphology refers to the study of the structure of words, particularly the smallest units of meaning in words: morphemes.

24. What is a morpheme? • A word or a part of a word that carries meaning. They are the smallest unit of meaning in a language. • Ex: place, re-, -ment, -s

25. Unbound Morphemes Unbound morphemes, which are roots within more complex words that can stand alone as words. Example: Popular

26. Bound Morphemes • Inflectional morphemes • Derivational morphemes

27. Inflectional Morphemes(“ed” “s” “ing”) -They can only be suffixes. -They are a marker of some kind (plural, tense….). -They don’t change part of speech. -They carry more grammatical meaning than content.

28. Derivational Morphemes Affixes= prefixes, suffixes, and connectors Derivational morphemes can change the meaning and part of speech of the word. Most prefixes (“pre” “post” “re”) change content meaning, but do not change the part of speech of the word. View, preview Most suffixes (“ful” “able” “ist”) can change the content meaning and the part of speech of the word. Popular, popularity

29. Connectors They connect suffixes with bases. (e, i, u - in Latin words) (o, in Greek words) They also connect 2 bases or 2 suffixes. Doctorial Special Phonology Linear Actual

30. Watch Out! A syllable can be disguised as a “morpheme wanna-be.” It may look like and sound just like a morpheme! (-er as in father) (moth as in mother) The word part it clings to may even be a word on its own. Can “mother” be broken into 2 meaningful word parts? Is a mother someone who moths? In these words, moth, fath, and er are not morphemes.

31. Turn and Talk • Explain the differences between bound and unbound morphemes. Don’t forget to describe the two different types of unbound morphemes!

32. As with phonemic awareness, in morphology, we are: -Segmenting words into word parts to be able to spell transported = trans + port + ed -Blendingword parts together to read or pronounce trans + port + ed = transported -Manipulating word parts to create and infer meanings of new words transportedexported extendedpretendedextracted

33. Apply segmenting, blending and manipulating to this word! • noun: floccinaucinihilipilification • floc·ci·nau·ci·ni·hil·i·pil·i·fi·ca·tion • ˌfläksəˌnôsəˌnīˌhiləˌpiləfiˈkāSHən/ • 1. the action or habit of estimating something as worthless. (The word is used chiefly as a curiosity.).

35. What is morphological awareness (MA)? The ability to reflect upon and manipulate morphemes and employ word formation rules in one’s language. Example: If a student grows in MA, she becomes increasingly aware that words sharing the same base or root are similar in form and meaning. For example, the child notices similarities across painted, painter, paintings, painterly, and repaint, at the same time realizing that pain –while somewhat similar in form—is not related to this morphological family. MA also includes knowledge of common suffixes and prefixes.

36. Baby-lag • Noun: Extreme fatigue and disorientation due to the sleep deprivation associated with parenting a baby. • See also babylag, baby lag

37. Video • English Word Formation

38. Student development of morphological awareness

39. Who Should Learn Morphology? • All students!!! • Research has shown that students with Special Needs and English Language Learners especially benefit from instruction in morphology.

40. Application to The Common Core State StandardsVocabulary Acquisition and Use • L. 1. 4 [First Grade] Use frequently occurring affixes as a clue to the meaning of a word. •  L.2.4 [Second Grade] Determine the meaning of the new word formed when a known prefix is added to a known word (e.g., happy/unhappy, tell/retell). • L. 3. 4 [Third Grade] Determine the meaning of the new word formed when a known affix is added to a known word (e.g., agreeable/disagreeable, comfortable/uncomfortable, care/careless, heat/preheat). • L.4.4 (Fourth Grade and Fifth Grade): Use common, grade-appropriate Greek and Latin affixes and roots as clues to the meaning of a word.

41. The Fourth Grade Slump • Academic vocabulary demands increase • Reading comprehension decreases (Kieffer and Lesaux)

42. Vocabulary and reading comprehension have a reciprocal relationship—as greater vocabulary leads to greater comprehension, better comprehension also leads to learning more vocabulary words

44. As morphological awareness increases, reading comprehension increases (Kieffer and Lesaux)

45. Classroom Application

46. Teach in Context • Knowledge of Prefixes and Suffixes • Knowledge of How Words Get Transformed • Knowledge of roots

47. Prefixes • There is a significant body of research indicating that instruction of prefixes is beneficial, and many vocabulary researchers recommend instruction of the most common prefixes as the first and best component of word analysis. (Graves, Edwards, 2004). • 20 prefixes account for almost 97% of the 2, 959 prefixed words that most frequently appear in school reading materials. • Four of these prefixes account for 58% of all prefixes.

48. Teaching Prefixes • Provide direct, explicit instruction about what a prefix is and how it can affect he meaning of a word. Provide many examples of words with prefixes that most students already know. • Avoid having students focus on memorizing the meanings of prefixes; instead have them practice using knowledge of prefix meanings to help define new words. • Provide students list of roots and prefixes and have them try to combine them to create new words. • Encourage students to think of other words they know that start with the same prefix. This can provide another clue to the meaning.

49. Suffixes • Less agreement about the value of teaching suffixes. • Inflectional suffixes do not change meaning. • Suffixes have vague meaning (-ic=related or marked by) • Teach suffixes in content classroom reading.

50. Root or Base? • Base Word: Usually a free-standing word, often of Anglo-Saxon origin. • Example: water • Root Word: Usually not free-standing; often Latin or Greek origin • Example: aqua in aquamarine