How to Teach Greek and Latin Roots in Elementary Classrooms

What is a root word?

A root word is the part of the word that holds the main idea. Root words come to us from Latin and Greek, but they do not usually stand alone in English. They have prefixes or suffixes attached to them. For example, jacio and jactum are the Latin roots for “throw.” These roots are found in “eject” and “interject” and “object.”

A base word is also used to describe the part of the word that holds the main idea. Base words are typically referring to words that come to us from Anglo-Saxon English, Native English, or Old English (all are the same). Base words can stand alone. For example, bake is a base word that can be used with several affixes: rebake, baking, baked, bakes. Base words are typically learned very naturally through conversation and reading in the early elementary grades, because Anglo-Saxon words are mostly one syllable words about everyday things.

The benefits of teaching Greek and Latin roots

There are many benefits to teaching roots, such as increasing reading comprehension and developing rhetoric.

Reading Comprehension

In order to be a good reader, students must first read fluently. Once this is mastered, students must develop their vocabulary. Acquiring vocabulary increases reading comprehension because it allows students to fully understand the meaning of the text.

Sometimes you listen to a student read and they are fluent, reading with expression even, but when you ask them a question about what they have read, they have not the foggiest idea what the answer is. Often times this happens when the student did not know the meaning of some of the words. Try reading this passage with just 10% of the words blacked out. How does it affect your comprehension? What shades of understanding would be amiss?

Rhetoric

Ultimately, we want our students to not only read and understand great books, but to join in the conversation that has been happening for centuries. We want them to be able to effectively express themselves with confidence. Joégil K. Lundquist says it beautifully:

A good vocabulary is a strong element in a child’s self-esteem. The more words children know, the less other people can talk over their heads and the taller they stand in their own eyes. Moreover, they can choose, among many words, the exact ones which express their thoughts and visions.

Joégil K. Lundquist, English From the Roots Up

The key to good vocabulary instruction:

1. Begin early. Waiting until high school to memorize sets of words for the SAT is setting them up to never learn the joy of language (and most likely to never add the words into their working lexicon). When you begin in the lower elementary grades, when students are sponges, and you slowly fill them up with an ocean of words, high school is then the time they get to swim in them like the old friends they are. Dickens and Tolstoy aren’t scary. They are dear friends with a good story to share.
2. Teach vocabulary within the context of its content area. Math, history, science, literature — they all have words that allow us to understand them more clearly and specifically. To memorize the definition of words and know nothing about the context they are typically used in is like handing a child a shovel while standing in a kitchen and telling them, “This is a tool used to move soil,” — without allowing them to go out into the garden and actually move the soil themselves.
3. Rather than teaching vocabulary as whole words, teach them as sets of interchangeable parts. English has over a million words! It is overwhelming to directly teach every word in English: but you don’t need to. You need to give them the building blocks to discover new words for themselves. You need to teach them the roots and affixes.

How to introduce Greek and Latin roots

Khan Academy has created this video as a resource for introducing Latin and Greek roots and affixes. It’s light-hearted, but a helpful and informative clip.

Terms to teach

Before beginning lessons on roots, you will need to define the terms “definition” and “derivation” since both will be used in every lesson. This is an excellent opportunity to introduce students to the concept of looking at a word’s parts (the root and affixes) to determine the word’s meaning.

How to teach Latin and Greek roots

Resources

The best resource I have used in teaching Latin and Greek roots is English From the Roots Up, Volumes 1 and 2. It is truly a phenomenal teacher resource providing not just the roots and their meanings, but also the history of the roots and their derivations. It brings the roots to life in a way I’ve yet to encounter elsewhere.

If you are looking for a resource to look up prefixes, roots, and suffixes, unabridged dictionaries are a delight and all encompassing (I currently have a Webster’s New International Dictionary. It is huge, but a delightful place to look for etymology and origin and everything else you may want to know about a word).

I also refer to The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists. They have an entire section devoted to vocabulary that includes prefixes, suffixes, and roots. It also has lists of academic vocabulary for all the main subject areas and grade levels.

The ABC’s and All Their Tricks has an incredible section teaching the Latin affixes versus Anglo-Saxon affixes, as well as the rules for how to add them while spelling.

In terms of online resources, etymonline is a virtual etymology dictionary that gives you the history of a word and its parts.

Lastly, I have created a Morphology Student Notebook and Teacher Guide to use as a tool while learning the roots and vocabulary.

Routine

Every Monday I would introduce the roots we would learn for the week — typically 2 or 3. English From the Roots Up has an index card method it recommends where students write the root on the front of the card, tracing the edges with red for Latin roots (think Red for Roman) and green for Greek roots. Then on the back, students write the definition of the root and several derivations along with their definitions.

Throughout the week I begin our day by having my students stand and as I say the root, they repeat it and give me the definition along with a motion (for example “graph” means “to write or draw” so my students would say “graph – write! draw!” while writing with an imaginary pencil on the air). Then my students would sit and I would begin with a verbal review of the derivations.

I have the students add to their notecard as we have the discussion, giving them the opportunity to play with the root and make connections to words they already know. For words they have not encountered before, or may not understand the meaning of as easily, I may show a picture or short video to help them. For example, my students all knew what a photograph was, but the idea of a “picture drawn by light” did not make as much sense to them, so we looked at a diagram of how a camera works.

It’s important that this time feels playful. It makes words interesting, something to be manipulated and interacted with, not written in a list to memorize. My students did not raise their hands during lessons on roots. I wanted them to be free to think and enthusiastically share the connections they were making. This also keeps the pace of the lesson moving quickly.

How to develop morphological awareness

Morphology is the study of morphemes, or the units of meaning that makeup a word. To draw from a previous example, “parallel” has the root “para” in it, which means “beside,” and “allos” which means, “other.” Thus, parallel means lying beside another line without touching. Morphological awareness is an awareness of the morphemes within a word.

When Reading

To explicitly teach the process of identifying the morphemes within a word, if I taught the root “para” and then the derivation “parallel” I would have my students underline the root “para” and then double underline the root “allos,” which in the word “parallel” is just “all” and then talk about the suffix “el.”

To encourage students to look for morphemes throughout the day as we are reading in all our subjects, if I see a word with a root we have learned, I’ll stop and say, “Oooh, look at “scientific” — what root do you see? (They see “science” and the suffix “-ic” denoting an adjective). Or while in math, I may say, “Equivalent fractions. Equivalent. What root do you see?” (“Equal!”).

When Spelling

To help my students apply their knowledge of roots while spelling, I do not allow them to simply copy the derivations down as we add them to the index card. Instead, once the word has been said, such as “paragraph” then I would treat it as a spelling word and we would go from sound to print.

Related Articles

If you are looking for a list of affixes, see The 20 Most Common Prefixes and Suffixes students will encounter while reading.

This post contains affiliate links as a member of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you make a purchase using one of these Amazon links, I will receive compensation at no extra cost to you.