This advice document has been shared from teacher to teacher for years. No one knows where he came from. Perhaps the creative teacher thought it was in his spare time. I took a simple lesson plan idea and reworked it for a generation of students. . The lesson plan involves breaking words into their prefixes, roots and suffixes. Also, it involves the known parts of the words, and by defining them, it adapts them into the whole definition. An example of this word would be psychology. Psycho means mind or brain, and theology means study. Thus psychology means the study of the mind.
The word you need is children since it is probably one of the longest and most complex scientific words in English. Language The word is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Usually the teachers write the word on the board and the children break it into pieces. This plan has changed a bit
I divide my children into eight parts, as a word can be broken into eight parts. So if my class has 24 students, each group has three students. I write part of the eight word on index cards. Go to cards in the box for students to choose from the cards. Their job is to choose the card with the part of the word. The discourse is open to the following parts; pneumono, ultra, micro, scopic, flint, volcano, conio, osi.
Each group requires a meaning, using a dictionary or best guess or can search the internet. The group must define the first response of the choice. They also choose their second choice, in case their first choice is wrong. Each group chooses a speaker. After about five minutes, I spoke for each of the eight groups I came to the front. They then have their word root written on an 8 by 10 piece of paper at the top and the definition at the bottom. They also write the second choice on the same paper at the back. The students line up so that the roots appear in the word. The word is read in parts, then the definition is read. If they are wrong, the group leader must use the second choice of definition and we will repeat the process again. Usually in the second, all eight parts of the word are correctly defined.
The true definition of both roots and words is included here. It is compared to pneumonia. Beyond means above. Micro is small. Scope means a viewing device. Silicon is defined as the mineral silicon. A volcano signifies an eruption on the earth, from which molten rock flows. Coni is interpreted as dust. And finally, it means a morbid condition. So we know that we have broken it down, although the definition is more precise, students have a better idea of what the word means.
The last part of the lesson is for the students to return to their groups and come up with a simpler definition. But in order to know each word, they can guess the abbreviated and summary definition. Most of the time, that’s right.
So what is the definition of a long word? Pneumonoultramicrosocpicsilicovolcanoconiosis is defined as a lung disease resulting from the habitual inhalation of very fine particles of silicon dust. So how does this plan relate to the training lesson?
This helps students to learn a new strategy that they can use in difficult words, especially in science. Chances are, they already know part of the word, and they see the rest of the prefixes or roots or suffixes they don’t know. As readers do not understand verbatim, students now have a new technique that they can use to increase their understanding of what they are reading.
As all good teachers know, comprehension is the cornerstone of learning. If your students are again students or home school children have difficulty understanding the meaning of a long and difficult word, show them. than to break the word into parts. Their comprehension improves dramatically once they learn this strategy.
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- Experiences in reading and science Classrooms.
