RESPECT: A Structured Word Inquiry

Description

At home or in a classroom, you and I will talk about respect this year. Respect for others, respect for parents, respect for ourselves.  It’s a great lead-in to this respect: structured word inquiry.

What’s structured word inquiry? It’s an engaging way of studying a word family and connecting spelling and meaning. Your students will learn to think like a scientist as they discuss what a word means and determine the structure, or morphology. Then, they’ll dig deeper as they learn about different types of relatives and finally explore the sounds represented by letters in the word family.

You’ll learn how to carry out the inquiry, the questions to ask, and where to find the answers.  I’ve also included information about how to learn from an etymological dictionary entry on Etymonline.com.

You’ll find these in your download:

• a discovery graphic for words having the same base spelling as respect
  • color & black/white options
• the structured word inquiry worksheet with the four questions
  • color & black/white options
• a word web and an example of a complete word web
• a <spect> matrix as well as some related words that stay outside the matrix
• Explanation for the parent, tutor, or teacher

Students enjoy creating word sums that we use with the matrix. It’s like putting the pieces of a Lego creation or a puzzle together. Word sums are explained in the teacher information.

Reading and Spelling Benefit

This word study builds spelling understanding but it also helps with reading fluency. How? The more students are familiar with common prefixes and suffixes, the more fluently they will read those in longer words. As they’re writing or typing word sums, they’re strengthening their understanding of English morphology. Spelling skills benefit reading skills.

Attention to spelling, attention to morphemes, and attention to meaning lead to improved reading fluency and reading comprehension.

Thanks for checking this out. I hope it’s as helpful for your students as it is for mine.

More info about Structured Word Inquiry research (Bowers & Kirby, 2010)