Word Within the Word

Since I teach Advanced Academics, I am a strong advocate for the use of Michael Clay Thompson's The Word Within the Word.  Having taken three years of Latin in high school myself, I have first hand knowledge of how helpful word stems have been in my reading and writing experiences in college and adult life.  A colleague and I have put together and implemented our own activities and routines for each "list".  We have both seen tremendous growth in our students' writing vocabulary and structure as well as in their reading comprehension as they attack new words and decode their meaning using the stems that we highlight each week (25 stems per week with a major focus on 8 vocabulary words/stems each week).  In the past, we have tested weekly, but after surveying my students at the end of the past school year, I have decided to change things up a bit by testing every two weeks.

The Word Within the Word has 20 lists.  So far we have only been able to get in the first 17 lists in a school year.  We test on Fridays (make up our own tests which incorporate vocabulary word usage in context, sentence structure and writing, as well as a few other grammar skills).  After each test, students pick up the chart for the next word list, which they will be tested on two weeks later.  During these two weeks, we have created short morning work activities for them to do to help them delve a bit deeper and really internalize these stem meanings.

Each student keeps their activities (glue-in in the past but we are changing that a little this year) in their own Word Within the Word or Word Study notebooks.  By the end of the year, each student has a valuable resource that can be used well into their high school and college years!

This summer, I have found some new ideas on Pinterest and hope to implement some of them in the coming year.