Small Words

We have really started to work on the parts of words.  Each week now we are looking at a suffix or a prefix or a greek or latin root.  I really wanted the students to understand why we are looking at these small parts of the words, so I went searching on youtube and found this great video.

We watched this video in class last week.  I think it really helped the students understand that if they understand the smaller words or parts of a word they will be able to spell and understand bigger words.  

I have been so impressed with the class.  Obviously we have not been able to string together a large group of days.  Even with these constant breaks the class is working so hard.  Today I just started asking some rapid fire questions about the prefixes, suffixes, and greek roots that we had discussed.  It was amazing to see the retention the students were able to show me with their answers.  

Today also allowed us to get into our hero unit.  We started by reading an article about two cross country runners.  As a class we read the article and wrote our thinking all around the text.  The class shared some great thinking and I was really impressed that we also noticed some of the amazing writing from the piece.  

After reading the article we started to make a list of characteristics of a hero.  The class added that a hero is willing to help others and they might be persistent.  We will continue to add to this list of characteristics as we read more.  

Hope you are all having a great week.