Who is this for?
Students
- They've finished That Reading Thing or another speech to print program and are reading with more fluency, confidence and understanding.
- They consistently use the strategies from That Spelling Thing.
- They're now ready to dive deeper into spelling and vocabulary both to improve reading comprehension and to develop better writing and speaking/listening skills.
Teachers/Tutors
- You may be trained in That Reading Thing or another linguistic phonics program like Sounds-Write, EBLI or Reading Simplified.
- You've definitely read That Spelling Thing and tried out the approaches for accurate spelling.
- You're now at the 'making the most of memory' section and are interested in bundling words to extend vocabulary.
- You're probably wanting to use morphology as part of that vocabulary development.
- Before getting started, ask yourself if you're teaching morphology or using morphology to accomplish your goals.
Let's look at two words that are related by ancient but not everyday morphology.
The words sense and consent share a Latin root, sentīre, predominantly meaning 'feel'.
If you're teaching morphology and etymology as the end goal, then you can go ahead and teach all the words that are related through that root. However, if your end goal is improved comprehension through vocabulary growth, I think we should be very careful about meaning and morphemes.
In morphological terms, consent is comprised of 'con' meaning 'with or together' and sent meaning 'feeling'. The modern word, consent, does not feature feeling. It's about giving permission or agreeing to have something done to you.
Saying that, 'consent' means 'with feeling' or 'feeling together' is verging on an etymological fallacy which means insisting that the modern meaning of a word is the same as the historical meaning. Does 'consent', today, mean feeling the way 'sentimental' or 'sensitive' do?
Rather than teaching 'consent' alongside 'sensitive', teach it with:
consent
assent
dissent
consensus
consensual
You could then contrast assent and dissent with ascent and descent which have a different root but are homophones. Note that the former can be either a verb or a noun but the latter are only nouns. What are their verbs? Ascend and descend. Play with those ideas in speaking and writing. Pick one of the 6 words out of a hat and create a correct sentence.
That is the essence of 'bundling' in That Spelling Thing. It creates a manageable list that is related by current meaning (everyday morphology) and easy to put into use.
The 'sense' words create an even richer bundle.
sense
sensitive - insensitive - oversensitive
sensible
sensibility
sensory
nonsense
sensation - sensational - sensationalize
sensitize - desensitize
Sentiment - sentimental could also be included in the sense words because feeling is prominent even though the spelling matches the consent group. Ask your students where they think sentiment belongs.
Resent - resentment are similar and definitely about feeling. Amusingly, at one time resent meant feeling with deep gratitude! Those are the interesting but probably not helpful stories one picks up while researching words.
There are so many ways to use sense in speech and writing and so many nuances and idioms to discuss.
That makes sense.
6th sense
Sense of humour, smell, dignity, style etc.
In one sense...
Come to your senses
Have more money than sense
See sense
Common sense
Horse sense
What's the difference between calling someone sensitive, insensitive and oversensitive?
Write a scene with a character behaving in one of those three ways. Or tell me a quick anecdote about someone acting in one of those three ways. You can support your students with a scene if they're not sure where to start. Afterwards, discuss the characters they've written. Have they created stereotypes of age and gender? Is that because we assume certain people are oversensitive and others are insensitive? These conversations will continue to expand vocabulary way beyond learning a Latin root.
Remember, (and this is true across the language), words can look like they share morphemes but don't.
Not all 'sent' words have the same root.
present
absent
represent - representation - representative
These words are based on the Latin word for 'to be'. Instead of teaching a new and not very obvious root, talk about the several meanings and parts of speech of 'present', then 'absent' as the antonym of the adjective. 'Represent' means to be present in someone or something's place.
I'm representing the family at the funeral.
The burning candle often represents the passage of time in art and literature.
Conclusion?
We're teaching vocabulary and using morphology and etymology when they supports memory.
We're explicitly teaching affixes like in-, over-, de-, -ize/-ise.
We're noticing spelling patterns as well as meaning patterns.
We're teaching current usage rather than history unless it serves a clear purpose for remembering those words.
This is different from teaching morphology & etymology and assuming they will enrich vocabulary.
We're avoiding etymological fallacy.
Finally, just like in That Reading Thing, older learners come with latent knowledge. They may not know anything about morphology and they may seem to have tiny vocabularies, but persisting in conversations about words, using them in speech and writing and pointing out connections will cause small explosions of recognition. You want to hear:
Oh yeah - I've heard that word but I didn't know how to use it.