This word as well as words to follow were on the Great Grown-up Spelling Bee in Houston, Texas: The word liverish means not feeling well. It comes from which language?
77% said Anglo-Saxon
15% said Latin
8% said Greek
0% said French
Many of the every-day words that have to do with the body come from Anglo-Saxon, as does this one. The suffix -ish, meaning resembling, gives it away as an adjective.
What word is made from two Greek combining forms meaning life and circle?
3% said autobiography
93% said biosphere
3% said archangel
0% said revive
Bio means life and sphere means circle, so the correct answer is biosphere, the Earth and atmosphere surrounding it that supports life.
The word “cleave” comes from two Anglo-Saxon words that mean:
46% said a) to split
12% said b) to adhere
42% said c) both a) and b)
0% d) none of the above
The word cleave is actually derived from two Anglo-Saxon words that are opposite in meaning: cleofan, which means “to split”; and clifian, which means “to adhere.” So…what does it mean? It means both! The answer is c.
Turkey was on my mind because Thanksgiving, a feasting holiday was coming soon. Turkeys received their name from:
8% said a. a group of settlers in the New World who were originally from Turkey
46% sad b. European settlers who thought it was an African bird called the turkey cock.
46% said c. European settlers who thought the birds head motions resembled a key turning in a lock – “turn-key” eventually became “turkey.”
Settlers in the New World mistook the American bird to be the African bird that is known now as the guinea fowl, believed to have originated in Turkey. This African bird was known at the time as the “turkey cock,” so the correct answer is b.
Early language development was shown to be associated with later development of literacy skills, both oral and written, by authors Preston, Frost, Mencl, Fulbright, Landi, Grigorenko, Jacobsen, and Pugh in this 2010 study.
The authors compared elementary-aged children from 4 years 10 months to 12 years 8 months who had been reported to have had early, “on time,” and late-onset speech development. With tests that included the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III (Dunn and Dunn, 1997); the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (Wagner et al., 1999); the Gray Oral Reading Test (Wiederholt and Bryant, 2001) the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (Torgesen et al., 1999) and several subtests of the Woodcock Johnson-III Tests of Achievement (Woodcock et al., 2001), both oral and written language skills were tested, as well as fMRI tests that showed brain activity during literacy tasks.
The results were consistent with previous studies cited by the authors that showed that early language development has a relationship with literacy skills later in school, and that there are differences in the brain areas activated while doing tasks that involve literacy skills Typically, children speak their first words at around 12 months and begin to put two or more words together before their second birthday. In this study, the authors used parent reports of their child’s first two word sentences as the measure for group membership.
These findings may show that early intervention for development of oral language could be important to reading development later in school.
Preson, J. L., Frost, S. J., Mencl, W. Einar., Fulbright, R. K., Landi, N., Grigorenko, E., Jacobsen, L., & Pugh, K. R. (2010). Early and lte talkers: School-age language, literacy and neurolinguistic differences. Brain, 133, 2185–2195.
It is estimated that the average students grows his or her vocabulary by thousands of words per year (Carlise & Katz., 2005). In order for students to add words at this incredible rate, students need exposure to great numbers of words (Aaron et al., 2008). Teachers must create opportunities for students to hear, read, and interact with new words on a daily basis. This includes using rigorous vocabulary words when teaching, reading challenging books aloud, and pushing students to experiment with new words (Aaron et. al., 2008). This approach to instruction helps students gain superficial knowledge of many new words. However, the major drawback, if used in isolation, is that students truly master very few of these words. They may only know the words in one context, or only one usage. Teachers must facilitate this move from exposure to mastery.
In contrast to casting a wide net through mere exposure, another approach to vocabulary instruction requires direct vocabulary instruction. In this approach, students are provided with repeated opportunities to interact with new words through word games or dictionary games. Students are explicitly taught word meanings, usages, parts of speech, etc. (Aaron et al., 2008). Teachers using this approach are teaching the word in depth so that students are able to fully integrate the word into their daily vernacular. Not only to students hear the words embedded in conversation, they are taught about the words (Aaron et al., 2008). This type of vocabulary instruction is extremely valuable, but is limited in the breadth of words that can be introduced. Teachers cannot possibly teach close to 3,000 words a year with the great amount of detail required by this approach. Similarly, students cannot be expected to learn so much about thousands of words in one year.
This is the conundrum facing teachers of vocabulary. They must not only grow a student’s vocabulary, but also deepen it.These two vastly different approaches to vocabulary can be reconciled with planning. Teachers need to not only integrate vocabulary instruction into every subject and teaching situation, but every interaction with students. This is the exposure that is seen in the “wide but shallow” approach. Students are pushed by hearing words used in context, but this exposure is not exhaustive. In addition to using a wide approach, an effective vocabulary teacher must also choose choice words to delve deeper into, words that will be taught explicitly to students so that they may use them accurately in many contexts with confidence. By using both approaches simultaneously, teachers will give students the exposure needed to grow their vocabularies exponentially, while also providing them with the tools to deepen concepts for full mastery of words.
Marnita Coenraad, master of reading and writing student, Neuhaus/SMU
The word trick comes from a Latin word that means:
80% said “deceive.”
13 % said “hoodwink.”
7% said “magic.”
0% said “shuffle.”
Last month was the month of Halloween. Trick or Treat! The word “trick” comes from the Latin word tricari, which means to be evasive or shuffle, so the correct answer is D!
The word prius originated from Latin and is:
9% said an adjective meaning fancy or prestigious
4% said a noun meaning horse
35% said a noun meaning beginning
52% said an adjective meaning hybrid
I drive a Toyota Prius, and I love it! It was one of the first hybrid cars, which might be a reason for the name – not because it is a hybrid car, but because it was of the first ones! Prius is a noun meaning the beginning of something, so the correct answer is C.
Good news! The proper teaching of spelling/language results in wider vocabularies and an increased facility to read and integrate new vocabulary. The study of word origins, affixes, Latin roots and Greek combining forms not only help the student master spelling, but also open up new vocabulary to him or her. I have also seen spelling assist my students in acquiring new vocabulary in a more basic way.
For example, last week I was working with a second grader on the reading concept “or” = (or). One of the words was “organ”. She was not familiar with the word at all. We worked together going through the syllable division and decoding of the word and I had pictures of musical organs and organs inside the body to show her. Each time as she came back to the word, she would initially read it as “orgit” and then have to work through the decoding (using the “backing up” procedure) of the second syllable again. Then, we went on to spelling and “organ” was a spelling word. She had no problem dividing the word into syllables and spelling it. The next day, after having the experience of spelling the word, she had no problem reading it. Encoding the sound and writing the letters had helped cement the word in her mind and appropriate it into her reading vocabulary.
Beth Walmus
We said hello and goodbye in Finnish to Suzanne Carreker recently as she headed to Finland for a research fellowship at Agora Center, University of Jyväskylä. Suzanne will be listening to such world renowned reading researchers as Catherine McBride Chang, Ken Pugh, Richard Wagner, Malt Joshi, and Usha Goswami. Suzanne will be presenting research by Conway, Carreker, Boulware-Gooden, and Joshi indicating that fifth-grade students with poor spelling scores lack knowledge of basic phonological properties of words.