About this activity
Eight roots that carry abstract academic vocabulary, each with three words built from it: cred means believe, giving credible, credential and incredulous; dict means say, giving contradict, verdict and dictate; spect means look, giving perspective, spectator and retrospect; path means feeling, giving empathy, pathology and apathetic. Eight roots, twenty-four words, and a strategy for hundreds more.
How to use it in a session
Work from the three examples back to the root rather than the other way round. Showing credible, credential and incredulous and asking what they share produces a definition the student built, which sticks better than one they were given. Then give a fourth word — incredible, credit — and let them work it out, which is the actual skill. Fifteen minutes covers the eight roots with that extension.
What to listen for
Watch for the root's meaning surviving the prefix. Incredulous has the same root as credible with a negation in front, and a student who reads it as believable has found the root and lost the in-. Notice which roots are recognised in unfamiliar words — that transfer is the whole return on this work, and it usually shows up in a word you did not teach.
Carrying it home
When an unfamiliar long word comes up, ask what part of it looks familiar. Ten seconds, no materials, and it builds the habit of looking inside a word rather than at it.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Ninth through twelfth, aimed at the abstract vocabulary of high school textbooks and standardised tests.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all eight roots play with no account.
- How is this different from the middle school set?
- The middle school roots are concrete — bio, geo, tele, port. These are abstract, and they carry the vocabulary of argument and analysis rather than of content.