Diggin’ Up Roots: Latin and Greek Roots – Monday – Fall 2022 & Winter 2023 – 20 Weeks – Grades 5 – 8

Vocabulary development is crucial to becoming a good reader and writer; something I have written about at length.  In fact, it is one of the ‘magic ingredients’ for reading success.  Yet, many students really struggle with this issue.  Systematic, direct instruction of vocabulary can have tremendous impact on such students.  It will help them with reading comprehension, increasing prior knowledge, and is an excellent form of test prep for numerous standardized tests.

This is a COMPLETE mnemonic unit on eighty-four (of hundreds) Greek and Latin roots that are in thousands of English words.

PowerPoint presentations, videos, in-class and at-home activities, mainly an art book/Pictionary for made by the students for each of the Greek and Latin Roots. Frequent quizzes to check memorization and understanding. By the time students are finished with this class, they will have memorized the meanings of eighty-four common Greek and Latin roots. As a result, they will be able to figure out the meaning of thousands of English words.  If time allows, we will also look at prefixes and suffixes. This class will involve memorization work.  Additionally, students will either keep a MIND MAP journal or an ART JOURNAL to help them visualize each root!

Greek & Latin roots are the building blocks of over 70% of the words in the English language. They are found in words that students encounter in all subjects – words like biography, chronological, coordinate, polygon, reciprocal, etc. By teaching students, the meaning of roots, prefixes, and suffixes, we give them the ability to decode unfamiliar words.

This is a beginning course but should give the students a significant head start in learning these important building blocks in the English language.

When needed, appropriate homework will be given. Perhaps an hour or less for most. Worksheets and Memorization will be a part of homework.  Students can expect up to one hour weekly.

NOTE: Registration deadline is September 15, 2021.

There must be a minimum of 5 students to run this class.