Big Words For Young Readers - Book Summary
Written by: Brianna Guild, MHSc SLP
Date: June 27, 2024
This post summarizes what I learned while reading Big Words for Young Readers: Teaching Kids in Grades K to 5 to Decode―and Understand―Words With Multiple Syllables and Morphemes by Dr. Heidi Anne Mesmer.
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Reasoning: This book is clearly written for classroom teachers, but as a Speech-Language Pathologist who works with literacy clients one-on-one, I still found this book to be highly informative and filled with practical activity ideas and strategies for literacy instruction. I immediately started putting what I learned from this book into practice to make sure my students get more experience reading longer words. I appreciate the broad scope and sequence that is outlined, and that each chapter covers what to teach, when to teach it, and how to teach it. I also appreciate that there is more focus on morphology than syllable types.
Mesmer, H. A. (2024). Big Words for Young Readers: Teaching Kids in Grades K to 5 to Decode―and Understand―Words With Multiple Syllables and Morphemes. Scholastic.
Assessments
- Decoding Inventories:
- Spelling Inventories:
The Developmental Spelling Assessment (Ganske, 2020)
- Morphological Assessment:
Ingredients for Successful Learning
- Big-Words Mindset: the confidence to try big words, without being intimidated or shutting down.
- Curiosity: educators need to foster a sense of excitement, inquiry, and empowerment around words that drives students’ curiosity and desire to know more about words.
- Skills: students need the skills required to understand, read, and spell complex words. They need to know how word parts work, the meaning of prefixes and suffixes, and how to problem-solve when reading independently.
- Instruction: educators need to teach efficiently and effectively to develop students' skills, mindset, and curiosities about words.
How to Teach Big Words: Research-Based Principles
- Teach students how morphemes work.
- Provide explicit instruction and lots of application opportunities.
- Teach students to find the base word or root.
- Teach students the alphabetical principle - the fact that visual symbols (letters) represent speech sounds (phonemes) - and the morphological principles - 1) words related in meaning are often related in spelling, even if sounds shift when we pronounce them, and 2) English prioritizes consistent spelling of morphemes over consistent pronunciation of them (Bear et al., 2020).
- Teach students to think about spelling and meaning from the start (e.g., -ed spells the past tense even though it has different sounds - /t/, /d/, /ɪd/ or /əd/).
- Keep instruction active and multifaceted (e.g., build words up and take words apart).
- Use a problem-solving approach by looking for meaningful known parts in unknown words.
- Use cognates (words from different languages that share similar spellings, meanings and often pronunciations) to help multilingual learners.
Compounds, Contractions, and Inflections Without Spelling Changes in Grades K-1
- As early as kindergarten, students encounter simple inflections (e.g., -s, -ing) and compound words (e.g., backpack), and we can teach them how to handle reading and spelling these words.
- Teaching decodable compounds should come after students can automatically and easily blend a pattern (e.g., sun → suntan, sunset). Activities for teaching decodable compounds include:
Define compounds, including those with a transparent meaning (e.g., blueberry), some connection (e.g., firefly), and a completely new meaning (e.g., bookworm).
Cut-apart compounds by literally cutting written compounds into two words.
Build compounds using words cards (e.g., fish + net = fishnet, sun + fish = sunfish).
- Teach contractions with -s (e.g., he's), then will (e.g., she'll), then not (e.g., haven't), then would, could, should, and have (e.g., we'd, they've). Activities for teaching contractions include:
"Contraction machine" (e.g., he is → he’s).
Missing letter (e.g., she’ll: missing letter(s) = wi, two words = she will).
Contraction bingo where caller cards have contractions and bingo boards have the two words (or opposite).
- Teach inflections without spelling changes, such as adding -s to short vowel (CVC) words as they are learned, and adding -er, -ed, -ing to words ending in blends or digraphs. Activities for teaching inflections include:
Word equations without spelling changes (e.g., dog = dog + s, dog + s = dogs).
Make it big by choosing a base and adding inflections (e.g., camp, camps, camping, camped).
Find the imposter by identifying words that contain the morpheme and crossing out words which have the same sequence of letters, but are not a morpheme (e.g., has, dogs, miss, cats or talking, biking, ring, thing).
Syllables and Syllable Types in Grades 1-2
- A syllable is a unit of sound or pronunciation. Syllables can be units of meaning when they are entire words (e.g., camp) or morphemes (e.g., pre-, un-, -ful, -less), but not all syllables are units of meaning/morphemes.
- The 6 syllable types (closed, open, magic e, r-controlled, vowel teams, stable final) cover the most common syllable types in written English. When it comes to multisyllable words, "Syllable types work best in words that have a single, unbound morpheme as the root but with multiple syllables (e.g., animal). If a word has multiple morphemes in it (e.g., predetermine, undoing, action, running), I suggest having students find these morphemes to decode the word, because morphology is the basis of how English works, not syllabication" (Mesmer, 2024).
- Activities for teaching syllable types include:
Label as you go: read many single-syllable words with the syllable type, transform single-syllable words from one syllable type to another (e.g., CV to CVC), and sort single-syllable words into syllable types.
Extended study of multisyllabic words: read many multisyllabic words with the syllable type, search texts for words with the syllable type, find the vowel and use syllable types to decode multisyllabic words, and map, code or scoop multisyllabic words.
Prefixes and Suffixes in Grades 2-4
- Prefixes: are added to the beginning of words. They shift meaning of words by 1) negating or denying the base word (e.g., non-), 2) intensifying the base word or making it "more than" (e.g., over-), or 3) changing the base word's direction or position in some way (e.g., sub-, pre-).
- Suffixes: are added to the end of words. They can be 1) inflectional suffixes or inflections, which do not change part of speech, include fewer suffixes, and are mastered earlier (grades 1-2), or 2) derivational suffixes, which usually change part of speech, are more plentiful, and continue to be learned throughout middle and high school.
- Teach suffixes with spelling changes: -s or -es, change y to i, drop silent e, final consonant doubling.
- Guidelines for teaching affixes: 1) teach the most frequent prefixes and suffixes early (e.g., un-, re-, -s/-es, -ed), 2) group by meaning or grammatical purpose when possible (e.g., un-, in-, non- all mean not), 3) pay attention to the transparency of prefixes and suffixes (e.g., non- means not).
- Activities for teaching affixes include:
Mesmer's Four-Step Affixes Routine: 1) name the affix (e.g., prefix or suffix), 2) pronounce it, 3) define it, 4) give examples of words that contain the affix to illustrate its meaning (use known words).
PQRST (Baumann et al., 2003): identify the prefix (e.g., un- = not), identify the queen root (e.g., success), identify the suffixe(s) (e.g., -ful = full of, -ly = doing something), and then put all the parts together (unsuccessfully = doing without success). This supports decoding and understanding meaning.
Teach affixed forms when teaching a new word (e.g., new word = revolt, affixed forms = revolting, revolted, revolution, revolutionary, etc.). This also supports vocabulary learning.
Word equations with spelling changes (e.g., nod + ed = nodded, fry + ed = fried).
Latin and Greek Word Roots in Grades 4-5
- Latin roots carry the main meaning in a word, are bound roots (cannot stand alone), require prefixes and suffixes to create words, and are used in formal, academic, and literary texts (e.g., spect, tract, bio).
- Greek roots: carry the main meaning in a word, are bound roots (cannot stand alone), may have unique sound-spellings (e.g., ph = /f/, ch = /k/, y = short i), are also called "combining forms" because they can be combined with other roots at any position in a word, and are used primarily in science and math.
- Guidelines for teaching roots: 1) start with the most common Latin roots (e.g., aud, dict, ject, port), 2) move on to the most common Greek roots (e.g., auto, bio, graph, hydro), 3) follow a scope and sequence, but also teach bound roots in content areas, 4) ensure Latin and Greek roots are taught beyond grade 5.
- Activities for teaching roots include:
Mesmer's Four-Step Bound Roots Routine: 1) define "root", 2) introduce the root you are teaching, 3) read words and underline that root (try to use known words), 4) discuss the connection between the root meaning and the meaning of each word.
Peel off word parts to find the root to help students decode the word and use morphemes to understand the meaning of the word (e.g., deformed → formed → form).
"Word Root Trees" (Bear et al., 2020): students brainstorm words with a given root (e.g., rupt - erupt, disrupt, interrupt, abrupt, etc.), and then define the root in their own words based on the shared properties of the brainstormed words (e.g., "We think the root ___ means ___ because ___").
"Morpheme Triangles" (Winters, 2009): students are given an affixed word containing a given root (e.g., disrespectful), take that word apart (dis-, re-, spect, -ful), and generate more words that contain the prefix(es), root, and suffix(es).
I highly recommend you check out the full book if you want more information, including more activities and strategies for each skill taught in this broad scope and sequence, QR codes to videos of activity demonstrations, and appendices with very helpful word lists.
Reference:
Mesmer, H. A. (2024). Big Words for Young Readers: Teaching Kids in Grades K to 5 to Decode―and Understand―Words With Multiple Syllables and Morphemes. Scholastic.
Baumann, J. F., Edwards, E. C., Boland, E. M., Olejnik S., & Kame’enui, E. J. (2003). Vocabulary tricks: Effects of instruction in morophology and context on fifth-grade students’ ability to derive and infer word meanings. American Educational Research Journal, 40(2), 477-494.
Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. R. (2020). Words their way: Word student for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction. Pearson Higher Ed.
Winters, R. (2009). Interactive frames for vocabulary growth and word consciousness. The Reading Teacher, 62(8), 685-690.