2/3/04
CAN STUDYING VOCABULARY BE FUN?
Would you ever expect that studying vocabulary could be fun? No? Then heed this. Can you figure out why “monk” is related to the Greek root word “mono,” meaning one (as in monocle, monogram and monopoly)? Answer at bottom*. Or why “carnation” stems from “carne-” meaning meat or flesh? (Answer in next Ellie’sWord)
Have you ever wondered about any vehicle’s name? Why is an SUV named Tundra? An audi model, Cabriolet? A sedan, Intrigue? I certainly never noticed or thought about such names until I began writing Word Web Vocabulary.
Those of you who’ve been receiving Ellie’sWord for a while now know that I am big on all sorts of these language connections. Although Cool Connections® are one of the features of many of Word Web’s lessons, there are other association I notice and want students (and you) to notice, too.
For example, today while I was looking through the coupon flyers that come with the Sunday newspaper, I came across a promotion for Schick’s new product Quattro. Those of you using Volume II this year are either close to working on the “quad-” numerical prefix lesson or have already finished it and moved on. I hope that whichever the case is that you and your students will try to snag a Periodical Pearl about this product for a classroom bulletin board or for a notebook. When I next update Volume II, you can be sure that Schick’s Quattro will be added to the “What’s in a Product Name” feature.
The nicest part of working in a structured vocabulary is how it makes you aware of words that you most likely would have passed right over if you hadn’t had your awareness awakened to them. That’s why you would notice Schick’s new product name. Or why a headline like this one from my local newspaper — Rover lands on ‘bizarre’ terrain — would leap out at you. ‘Terra’ is one of the three Root-and-Branch** words that appears in Volume I. Bizarre is not an adjective I thought of when writing that lesson and giving examples of different types of terrain. Rocky, hilly, mountainous, rolling, sandy, flat, harsh, muddy, rugged, level, (un)familiar, uneven and slippery were the ones I came up with. As an aside, I’ll mention that bizarre is a vocabulary word in an upcoming volume, linked with “bazaar” as a confusing pair.
*Since "monk" originally meant a man who retired from the world and devoted himself to a solitary ascetic life, it's not hard to connect that with "mono-", the root word that means one.
**Root-and-Branch: An expression used by the Puritans meaning the whole of it without any exceptions or omissions. In Word Web, a Root-and-Branch word is one that has so many ramifications that it is the only focus for a whole week (no Real World Word, no Wicked Word of the Week.) Three of these appear in each volume.
Here’s a teaching reminder for this week: Do your students know how to use “none” correctly? Do they know that none is a contraction of no one or not one and is, therefore, a singular noun? Usually a prepositional phrase intervenes between the subject (none) and the verb, such as, “None of the girls is going to the dance.” If students get in the habit of thinking “none = no one or not one,” they won’t have a problem. “Not one of the girls is going ...” sounds fine; “Not one of the girls are going ...” does not. Why not have students practice this bit of grammar with their sentence writing this week?
That’s my word for this time. Ellie
Word Web Vocabulary: Moving vocabulary from the
edge of the curriculum to its center
