Word Analysis

Proficient readers use word analysis to create meaning.

In "word analysis," or "word study," students break words down into their smallest units of meaning. These units are "morphemes." Unlike syllables, each morpheme has a meaning that contributes to the whole word.

Word analysis is a valuable skill for all of your students, especially those with reading and language difficulties, and addresses several of the Common Core Standards in Vocabulary Acquisition and Use, as well as directly addressing K–5 Foundational Reading Skills. Student knowledge of morphemes helps them identify the meaning of words and also builds their vocabulary. As you think about differentiating instruction for word analysis, use UDL principles to address the wide range of student variability in your classroom, and provide multiple and flexible means of representation, action and expression, and engagement.

See the Slide Show Introduction to Word Analysis

Help your students understand how to use prefixes, suffixes, and root words to build meaning.

As you create your plan for teaching word analysis strategies, consider the variability of the learners in your class. What kinds of tools and methods will you use to provide access to understanding, practice, and expression? How will you differentiate instruction to engage the diverse students in your classroom?

Context

Mr. Chen's Grade 5 class is starting a unit on Ancient India. They will study the excavation of the cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in the Indus River Valley. To learn about the cities, they will explore materials from Harappa.com. This website offers rich resources from leading scholars. Features include audio, video, text, and full-color photos of artifacts and excavation sites.

Mr. Chen hopes that the website will engage his students and help bring the ancient civilizations to life. He thinks his students will be excited to read the first person accounts from the archeologists who discovered the two cities. He plans to use the website as a way to focus on key vocabulary. He'll also use the website to build his students' background knowledge.

Mr. Chen realizes that the text may be a stretch for his students, especially those who are struggling readers. Yet he also knows that his students will run across many of the same terms as they study other ancient civilizations. They'll also continue to encounter challenging terms. He wants to give them strategies they can use to tackle unfamiliar words. As he plans the first lesson, he thinks about how he can support two students who he knows will need help:

• Irina is an ELL student from Russia with a non-verbal learning disability. She has been in the United States since Grade 2 and speaks English well. But, she has begun to struggle with the reading in her courses as the texts become more difficult.
• James has significant health needs and is on a 504 plan. Because of repeated illness and lengthy hospital stays, he is often absent from school. He is a fairly strong reader, but he often has gaps in his knowledge and is struggling to keep up with the more complex texts.

Mr. Chen's school has launched a building-wide emphasis on reading for meaning and building vocabulary. As part of this process, Mr. Chen and the other Grade 5 teachers work closely with Mrs. Tremblay, the literacy coach. In grade-level team meetings, the Grade 5 teachers discuss ways that they can all weave reading and vocabulary strategies into their lessons. Their shared goal is to ensure that students use the strategies they learn in English language arts in their content area reading assignments. From this work, Mr. Chen knows that his students have recently begun several lessons around word analysis strategies. They are familiar with roots, prefixes, and suffixes.

Lesson

Before Reading

Before beginning the lesson, Mr. Chen reminds his students of the word analysis work they've been doing. He asks them to share some of the strategies they can use when they come across new words. He makes sure that students articulate several key points:

• A "morpheme" is the smallest meaningful part of a word.
• Any word can contain morphemes, and the same morphemes show up in lots of words.
• When you know roots, prefixes, and suffixes you have a head start on figuring out what a word means.
• Even if you have never seen a word before, its parts can tell you a lot.

Mr. Chen also directs his students to several online resources they can use in their reading, both in class and at home. The resources will help them find word meanings, information about morphemes, and other reference material to help them build their knowledge.

• Visual Thesaurus
• Merriam-Webster Online
• PrefixSuffix.com
• Online Etymology Dictionary

During Reading

Mr. Chen brings up a word that he knows his students will read often as they learn about the civilizations of the Indus River Valley: terracotta. Several future lessons on ancient civilizations will feature this word. He thinks it's a good word to use as a starting point for the lesson.

He asks his students if anyone knows what the word means. After a few guesses, he can see that his students are uncertain. He asks his students how they might approach figuring out this new word based on word analysis strategies. "Let's look at the first part of the word 'terra'," he says, "can anyone think of some other words that are based on the same root?"

Students raise their hands and offer several suggestions:

• Terrible
• Terrarium
• Extraterrestrial

Mr. Chen writes each suggestion on the whiteboard at the front of the room and adds one of his own: "all terrain vehicle." Next, he prompts students to look at each word to see if they have similar meanings. "Do terrible, terrarium, extraterrestrial, and all terrain vehicle have anything in common? Do they seem like they might have similar meanings?" He asks the students who have volunteered words to help them out with the meaning. "Devon, you suggested terrarium—what is that? Is it something like an aquarium?"

Devon replies, "Yeah, I have one at home for my snake—it's like a fish tank, but you don't put any water in it, just dirt and stuff." "Janet, what about you," asks Mr. Chen, "you suggested extraterrestrial, where did you get that?" "I like reading science fiction," Janet responds, "and I watch things like Star Trek and E.T. with my mom; extraterrestrial is another word for alien."

Mr. Chen muses, "Hmm, so we have one word that means a fish tank that you put dirt, or earth, in, and one word that means alien, or a creature that isn't from the planet Earth. What about this other one I suggested, does anyone know what an All Terrain Vehicle is? Or maybe you've heard ATV before?"

Anna raises her hand and shares, "When we go to my cousin's house, we ride 4 wheelers, and my uncle calls them ATVs." Mr. Chen prompts Anna to go further, asking, "Where do you ride them?" "Through the words on dirt tracks near my uncle's house," Anna says.

"So looking at all these words, what do they seem to have in common?" Mr. Chen asks, "they all seem to be about dirt, or earth, or soil. Now let's look back at the last word on our list, 'terrible,' does this word seem to relate to the others? No? So can we assume that terrible doesn't share the same root as these other words? Now we have figured out that the root 'terra' might relate to something having to do with the earth."

Mr. Chen shows the class how to use a website to look up "cotta" and to arrive at a definition of "terracotta," meaning literally "cooked earth." He connects this definition to the work his students have done in art class with clay. "In a minute," Mr. Chen tells his class, "we'll start looking at examples of terracotta figurines from the Indus River Valley."

Mr. Chen uses the interactive whiteboard to project the section on terracotta figurines for the class.

Image source

Students continue to flip through the images. They talk about where scientists found the clay figures and what people from long ago might have used the figures for.

Next, Mr. Chen assigns students to work in small groups of 3–4 to explore the materials on the website. He assigns each team a different section of materials to review:

• A unicorn seal
• Ancient Indus city walks: Mohenjo-daro
• Ancient Indus city walks: Harappa
• The latest discoveries

Some of the content is above grade level. So, Mr. Chen makes sure to pair stronger readers with struggling readers. He also ensures that each student has a chance to participate.

Rich slides and video showing the site excavations help bring the reading material to life. The visual images help support some of Mr. Chen's struggling readers. Students will work together to read and view the information in their various assigned sections. Then, they will use the material, plus that found in their textbook, to update the classroom wiki. Mr. Chen has reserved several pages of the wiki for information on the Indus Valley.

After Reading

Over the course of several class periods, Mr. Chen's students work on collecting information, images, and key vocabulary words on the cities. Each team is responsible for organizing their information according to important facts, key details, and vocabulary words. Mr. Chen then leads the class in sharing what they've learned. Together, students identify important information to add to the wiki. (The use of the wiki ensures that students have easy access to the information compiled by all class members with appropriate supports such as online dictionaries and text to speech. For more information see Guideline 5.2 Use multiple tools for construction and composition).

Mr. Chen has already created several pages. These pages address art, architecture, important findings, ideas about what the ancient Harappan civilizations were like, discoveries of the ancient cities, and key vocabulary words. Each student team has compiled a list of unfamiliar words they came across in their reading and provided information about definitions, including roots, prefixes, and suffixes.

After the class agrees on which information to include on the wiki, Mr. Chen breaks the class into teams: Writing, Art, Editing, and Publishing. The writing team takes all of the information students have collected and enters it into the wiki. The art team collects images, maps, and diagrams for their pages. The editing team checks over all of the text and makes corrections where needed. Finally, the publishing team oversees the process and makes sure everything is ready to be published. The teams work together throughout the process. The writing team confers with the art team to choose the best images. The publishing team works with the editing team to check the content, and the art team helps the publishing team review layout. (Mr. Chen provides an opportunity for students to collaborate with one another around a common goal and product demonstrating Guideline 8.3 Foster collaboration and community).

When the content has been added, and the teams are satisfied, the class works together to create the Indus Valley glossary. They review the words that the various teams have selected, removing duplicates and grouping words with similar morphemes. For example, several students came across the word anthropomorphic in their reading, while another team came across the word anthropologist. The class continues in this way until they have agreed on which words to include.

As a final activity, and for extra credit, Mr. Chen invites students to come up with words that share morphemes with the key terms they discovered in their work (e.g., anthro, terra, archae, ethno). The class will collect these words and definitions and add them to the Grade 5 wiki where all classes have been working together to build their own etymological database. Each entry lists the morpheme, its meaning, and related words. Students can access these materials and others posted to review strategies and help them in their work throughout the year.

He also spends time with each group as they read, share, and post their information. He "listens in" to ensure that everyone understands the material. During his check-ins, he asks students which strategies they're using to tackle new words. He encourages them to use word analysis. But, he also reminds them to tap other strategies they've been learning and practicing (context clues, semantic maps, online dictionaries, etc.). (He provides students with additional practice in use of strategies they have already learned. For more information see Guideline 3.4 Maximize transfer and generalization).

Reflection

Mr. Chen draws upon several sources as he looks back on students' learning and analyzes his teaching. Reviewing the classroom wiki helps him recall the lesson's successes and challenges. He also rereads the notes he took during the lesson. At the end of each day, he jotted down what he learned from his many "check ins" and "listen ins." Based on the story these sources tell, Mr. Chen is satisfied that he has met his RI.5.4- and RF.5.3-related goals for students. Almost all of the students are becoming better able to figure out the meaning of domain-specific words. Their word analysis skills are also growing stronger, and they are becoming adept users of the technology tools he has shared. Mr. Chen is thrilled with how well it worked to use the website and wiki to engage students in learning—and representing their knowledge—about the ancient cities. Both Irina and James, two of the students he is most concerned about, benefited from being able to access different kinds of learning materials and supports and from the extra background knowledge the website offered. Still, he is concerned about James and Irina and feels he can do even more to help them. He decides to ask for suggestions at the next Grade 5 meeting with Mrs. Tremblay, the literacy coach. He also plans to ask for support from his school's PowerUp Leadership Team. He records these reflections in his PowerUp Planner.

Find more resources in our PowerUp Resources & Research Database.

Find more resources in our PowerUp Resources & Research Database.