This year our English department got two sets of books that I'm very excited about: "Vocabulary for the High School Student" and "Vocabulary for the College-Bound Student" (Levine). The idea is that the freshmen and sophomore teachers work their way through the one for high schoolers, and the junior and senior teachers each take parts of the college-bound one. Ideally by the end of high school most students will have dug through all the words in this extensive unit. They are divided in such a way that students are not learning words by rote memorization, but instead learning processes to decipher words - processes like context clues, Greek and Latin roots, and related words. The exercises in the book require students to draw on more than just one spelling of one word; they use antonyms, synonyms, and extended thinking. While we've discovered we could teach an entire year-long class over the book, the material is excellent once we've figured out a way of incorporating it.
DAY ONE
This past month I began the chapter on Greek roots with all my English classes that will continue through April. In order to add a 'hook' to starting the chapter on Greek roots, I began the first class asking for volunteers. A student would raise her hand, and I'd turn to the smart board and write her name using the Greek alphabet. I'd ask for another volunteer, and then write that student's name on the board in Greek. They started to catch on and get really excited: "Do mine! Do Sarah! Do Ethan!" I then passed out copies of the Greek alphabet for them to paste in their notebooks. We talked about how there is no J or F or Y, and they marveled over the different letters. I took one semester of Biblical Greek at my parochial high school, which is now coming in handy as I recall using the Greek alphabet. My students are very impressed at my miniscule amount of knowledge. I then assigned the first word and exercise.
DAY ONE
This past month I began the chapter on Greek roots with all my English classes that will continue through April. In order to add a 'hook' to starting the chapter on Greek roots, I began the first class asking for volunteers. A student would raise her hand, and I'd turn to the smart board and write her name using the Greek alphabet. I'd ask for another volunteer, and then write that student's name on the board in Greek. They started to catch on and get really excited: "Do mine! Do Sarah! Do Ethan!" I then passed out copies of the Greek alphabet for them to paste in their notebooks. We talked about how there is no J or F or Y, and they marveled over the different letters. I took one semester of Biblical Greek at my parochial high school, which is now coming in handy as I recall using the Greek alphabet. My students are very impressed at my miniscule amount of knowledge. I then assigned the first word and exercise.