Day 5 Awesomeness

This was by far the most difficult challenge so far, as you can tell by the tardiness of my post.  I have gone back and forth on what to post and changed my mind several times.  I finally decided to sleep on it to see if I could  find something I felt comfortable with.

For years I have struggled with a way to get my students to learn the Greek and Latin roots.  They just weren't interested but I think they are important because if you know them you can figure out a slew of unknown words as you get older. So towards the end of this past quarter I tried again something new to see if I could get them to click and really get them to see how much of a bonus it would be for them to know these.

I started off by showing a power point with a little history of where they come from.  I gave them some sample words and then I gave them their "cheat sheet".  I told them we would be using them the rest of this quarter and maybe even next quarter so not to lose them.

I had a couple say they lost them so I posted them on my website and let them use the class copy but I would not give them another sheet.  We have a bunch of kids who openly admit to being to lazy to get the papers out of their backpack and just want new ones everyday. 0.o

Next I started off with crossword puzzles that used just the roots and their definitions.  They did one in class the first day so if they had questions they could ask me for help.  Then the rest of the week they were for homework.

The next week we graduated to entire words with the roots in them.  Again the first day I had them do them in class so I could help and the rest of the week was homework.   All of a sudden they were noticing words that had the roots in them in other classes and said they could figure out what the words meant.  It wasn't just a few it was a large number that finally that light bulb had gone off!

The next two weeks we did the same thing with the Latin roots.  I plan on doing some more this quarter just to keep them fresh and reinforce what they have learned.  I also have a flip card game on my power point that we do on Fridays when it is early release to practice as a group.  I had them arguing last time over which was correct so I let them debate a bit and then showed the answer.

This is one of those things that make teaching great!  I really have tried a million other things and nothing was clicking.  Finally, I found something...for now!