Do you remember studying vocabulary in school? I remember having a word list every week of about ten words which we were required to be able to spell and define correctly by the end of the week. It was SO tedious! And, like so many other aspects of school where you’re required to memorize things for a test, the words never stuck with me. For this reason I have never been a fan of teaching vocabulary. We read a lot and look up any words the kids are unfamiliar with, but formal vocabulary? If it looks the way I remember it, I’m not wasting my time teaching it.
For this reason, you can probably imagine my skepticism when I was asked to review a vocabulary program from Dynamic Literacy, but once I began looking at what they offer, I realized I might just give it a shot. I chose WordBuild: Foundations, Level 1 to review with my fourth grader Big Boy.
Dynamic Literacy’s products offer a very different way to teach vocabulary than what I grew up with. Rather than throwing random words together on a list to memorize, your child is taught that words are made up of roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Foundations, Level 1, is the first in the program and focuses on learning common prefixes and suffixes, as well as some basic spelling and grammar. The program begins with the basics: an introduction into compound words. From there you begin your lessons in prefixes and suffixes. By “playing with the word,” students are encouraged to figure out the meaning of a suffix based on how it changes the meaning of a word (for instance, if a singer is a person who sings, the suffix -er must mean a person who does something).
The WordBuild: Foundations, Level 1 set includes a teachers guide and two student activity books. The smaller of the two student books teaches the basics I just discussed, then the larger is the real Level 1 work. We made WordBuild a part of our everyday schooling, as this is how it suggests in the teachers guide. Each unit is broken down into five short activities, which take about ten to fifteen minutes per day. I think doing a little bit each day keeps the ideas fresh in Big Boy’s mind as well as helps keep it from getting boring. I love that the activities focus a lot on the child figuring out the answer themselves, rather than just filling in the blank. For example, let’s say the prefix we’re learning about this week is over-. The child is given a list of root words that they need to add the prefix to and then write out what the definition to that word would be. They are told once what the prefix means, then figure out what the bigger words including that prefix mean based on their new knowledge and deductive reasoning. Activities also include word searches and Magic Square (kind of a combination of Sudoku and word matching).
I really, really like the way this program is set up. At first I was concerned it was too easy, because it spends an entire week focused on one prefix or suffix. I mean, he’s in fourth grade, shouldn’t he know what “re-“ means by now? But I realized quickly that, even though he reads it all the time, he’s never taken the time to break down a word and think about what things like “re-“ or “-er” actually mean. Starting with Foundations is giving him a good (for lack of a better word) foundation for building his own vocabulary reading comprehension.
