About this activity
Twelve word families with each member's part of speech marked: act, active, activity, actively; teach, teacher, teaching; create, creative, creation; decide, decision, decisive; science, scientific, scientist; compete, competition, competitive. One root generates three or four words, and a student who sees that has multiplied their vocabulary without learning anything new.
How to use it in a session
Sort by part of speech across families rather than family by family. Putting activity, creation, decision and competition together makes -tion and -sion visible as noun makers, which is the pattern worth having. Then give a root and ask for the family — decide, and what is the noun — since production is where the sound changes bite: decide to decision shifts both the spelling and the stress. Twelve minutes covers the set.
What to listen for
Listen for stress shifts. Compete and competition put the stress in different places, as do photograph and photographer, and a student who says PHO-to-graph-er has the morphology and not the phonology. Watch for the irregular members — govern gives governor rather than governer, and science gives scientific with a spelling change that is not predictable.
Carrying it home
When a new word comes up in reading, ask what other words are in its family. It takes ten seconds and turns one word into three — decide gives decision and decisive, and a student who gets into the habit is building vocabulary without anyone teaching it.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Fifth through eighth, where academic vocabulary starts arriving in families rather than as single words.
- Do I need to sign in?
- No, all twelve families play free.
- Why does this help more than learning words one at a time?
- Because one root gives three or four words. A student who knows decide and the pattern gets decision and decisive without being taught them, which is a much better return than memorising three separate items.