Have Derivational Patterns Taken Root For You? :)

In this week's blog, I want to recap a very important point from our readings: Children learn pattern by pattern, not rule by rule or skill by skill.

As we have learned, the rules for phonics are very unreliable because the letter-sound relationships in our language do not match perfectly and are quite complex. Does it really help to tell a student that when "two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking" if that rule is only true about half of the time? Does it really help to tell a student to "sound it out" if they are working on a "ch" digraph where the "c" and the "h" actually make one sound together (rather than blending two sounds together)?

So as teachers, what we need to know and highlight with our students are the consistent patterns in our language. These are the patterns we have been learning about for the past two weeks. (And remember that a "rime" is a pattern that helps children attack vowels; this is different than a "rhyme"!) Over the past two weeks, you have hopefully added a great deal of "teacher knowledge" about letter-sound patterns!

We want older students who have mastered most of the sound patterns to begin focusing on meaning patterns in their spellings. For example, knowing that words like "photograph," "telephoto," and "photosynthesis" are based on the Greek word "photos" (meaning light) helps advanced students learn the meanings of words and enables them to spell them. (Joe and Marcy have given us a great start in the Week 5 tags by pulling out some of the key points about derivational patterns.)

This week, I want you to work a bit with root words and meaning patterns -- and hopefully have some fun, too! -- so you're going to play Brainburst! The directions are posted below:

Brainburst

Players compete to brainstorm as many words as they can that are derived from the same root in this game. Unique words are the only words that will earn points.

Materials

Different roots should be written on cards such as phon, dict, port, graph, scope, struct, spect and so on. (For this assignment, just choose two of these roots and play two rounds of the game!) Roots that have a wide variety of possible derivations should be chosen. Each player or team needs to have a piece of paper and a pencil. A standard dictionary and a timer are needed.

Procedures

1. The timer is set for 2 to 3 minutes and a card is turned over. Each team or player attempts to think of as many words as possible derived from that root. (E.g., for phon-, I'd begin my list with phonics, phonemes, telephone, etc.)
   
2. Players draw a line under their last word and count the number they have when the timer goes off.
3. The player with the longest list reads the list aloud. If another player has the same word, the word is crossed off of everyone’s list. Words that are not on another list are checked.
4. Each player reads aloud any words that no one else has called to determine whether he or she has a unique word. A dictionary should be used to help settle any disputes.
5. The winner of the round is the player or team with the most unique words.

Report Back

How did you and your partner do? Include the lists that you came up with and make sure to tell us the unique words from each of your list. Include in your post what you found out about the meaning of each root that you chose.