Why Morphology Matters for Word Reading and More with Melissa Orkin and Alex Osburn

Episode 238 

What if the “secret sauce” to reading big words isn’t just syllables, but also morphemes? In this episode, Melissa Orkin and Alex Osburn share why morphology is essential, especially in grades 3–6, and how it bridges word reading, vocabulary, and comprehension.

They dig into practical strategies for teaching morphology, from explicit routines to vocabulary activities like the Frayer model, and show how to weave it all into real texts so students connect meaning to print in powerful ways. You’ll hear how morphology instruction can be integrated with content areas, supported by oral language practice, and used to spark stronger engagement and deeper learning.

Resources Mentioned

• Video of the Lesson highlighted in the episode. From Morphology Anthology: Volume 3, Lesson 3: The Secret Lives of Rainforest Insects.
• Book: The Structured Literacy Playbook: Preplanned Lessons for Building Phonics and Fluency Skills 

We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.

Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.

Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.

Episode Transcript

Lori (00:01):
As a teacher, I have definitely had moments when
students hit a tough word in atext and just freeze.

Melissa (00:09):
Absolutely those big tricky words.
They just like stop studentsright in their tracks.
And I don't know about you,lori, but for me it was tough to
know, like how to help themnavigate those tough words.
And so today we're talkingabout something that can really
help, which is morphology.
Not only does it help studentsbreak down and decode words, but

(00:30):
it helps grow their vocabularyand understand what they're
reading.

Lori (00:34):
We are joined by two amazing experts, Melissa Orkin
and Alex Osborne.
They help make morphologyapproachable, practical and even
fun to teach.
We love fun morphology.
This conversation is packedwith ideas we know you'll want
to take straight back to yourclassroom or school.
Hi, teacher friends.

(00:55):
I'm Lori and I'm Melissa.
We are two educators who wantthe best for all kids, and we
know you do too.

Melissa (01:03):
We worked together in Baltimore when the district
adopted a new literacycurriculum.

Lori (01:08):
We realized there was so much more to learn about how to
teach reading and writing.

Melissa (01:13):
Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.
Hi, Melissa and Alex, welcometo the podcast.
Welcome back, Melissa and Alex.
Welcome for the first time.

Melissa Orkin (01:27):
Well, we are so honored to be here.
Thanks for having us back bypopular demand, right.

Melissa (01:32):
Absolutely, and we are so excited to talk to you today
about morphology, which you allcall the secret sauce in upper
elementary reading, so we'reexcited to hear about why that
is and what that means All right.

Lori (01:45):
So we've been talking so much about teaching
multisyllabic words and we'velearned that relying on syllable
division alone is not alwaysreliable and that morphology is
super helpful for students toread bigger words.
So, Melissa, why don't you kickus off by sharing how we teach

(02:05):
morphology in a way that sticks?

Melissa Orkin (02:08):
Okay.
So, yes, I couldn't agree more,Lori.
So morphology is this reallyincredible aspect of language
that bridges decoding andcomprehension, because it
provides insights not only aboutthe pronunciation of a chunk of
the word but also about themeaning, and so it can help us

(02:29):
with figuring out unfamiliarwords and it can help us with
overall fluency andcomprehension when we're reading
longer text.
So the work on morphologicaldestruction has been developing.
So the work on morphologicaldestruction has been developing.
I mean, morphology has longbeen studied by a number of

(02:51):
different linguists in the field, so that includes folks like
Pete Bowers and Marsha Henry andWilliam Van Cleave, and there
has been, more recently, someresearch on, like what works,
how do we teach morphology?
By and large, the studies havelooked at three different types
of instruction.

(03:11):
The first type of instructionis what we would think of as
implicit instruction, that's,using things like games and
sorting activities, like whatyou would imagine students might
be doing at independent sort ofstations or, like you know,
kind of desk work, in order toimprove their word recognition

(03:34):
skills.
The second type of instructionhas been focused more on
explicit instruction, and thisinvolves directly teaching a
morpheme like a prefix or asuffix, like the prefix re or
the suffix full or the root wordtrack and teaching the meaning

(03:54):
of those prefixes and suffixesand how to pronounce them, and
then providing some practice.
And that practice usually comesin the form of individual words
and so that really helps thestudents with the word
recognition.
But it doesn't always includethe application to connect to

(04:14):
text or giving students anopportunity to kind of
generalize their skills.
So if you know the word retract, will you figure out other
words with re in them?
Word retract, will you figureout other words with re in them?
And then the third strategythat had been explored is this
idea of morphological problemsolving, so that's, students'

(04:34):
ability to kind of inferindependently, Like if you know
the suffix hood, could youfigure out unknown words that
have that in them.
And this was sort of a reallyinteresting study that I just
want to share with you verybriefly.
It was done several years agoand what they wanted to know,

(04:58):
what the researchers wanted toknow this was Anglin and
colleagues.
What they wanted to know is ifstudents are able to take
morphemes that they know, soprefixes and suffixes and if
they're able to use those knownmorphemes to figure out new
vocabulary words.
So they found that betweenfirst through fifth graders the

(05:22):
fifth graders were the most ableto engage in this process
independently.
It was more problematic for theyounger students, but even
among the fifth grade studentsit got kind of dicey.
So they had the interviewerswalk through the generalizing
approach that the students wereusing and they wrote down the

(05:44):
transcripts of what the studentssaid.
So I just want to share withyou one quick transcript to kind
of show you where the breakdownmight occur in this process.
So this student is being askedto define the word priesthood.
So the interviewer says whatdoes the word priesthood mean?

(06:05):
And the student says well, Iknow what a priest is.
It's like a pastor or someone,and hood like childhood.
And the interviewer encouragesthem.
And then the student says well,maybe when you grow up you have
a good childhood and priesthood.
Like you might grow up whenyou're a child with a priest and

(06:26):
you'll have a good priesthoodand you'll know lots of stuff
from the Bible and everything.
And so then the interviewersays well, I'm not sure I
understand what you're saying.
Are you saying if you're achild, you grow up with a priest
and that's priesthood?
And the child says yep, so youcan see that like they had a
piece of it.

(06:46):
They had the hood piece, theyhad the priest, but they weren't
sure how those go together andhow they're related to childhood
.
So they were trying to use someinductive reasoning to
generalize, but it broke down.
And the reason it broke down isbecause the student did not have
the explicit information aboutwhat hood can mean as a suffix.

(07:09):
So hood can have two meanings.
The first meaning is it canmean like the condition of so
they were onto it with childhood, adulthood, the condition of
being a child, the condition ofbeing adult.
But they didn't have the secondmeaning.
And the second meaning is thathood can also mean members of a
definable group.
So, for example, priesthoodmeans members of being the

(07:32):
clergy right or a neighborhoodor members of a particular
geographic area.
So what the researchers foundwas that although the
morphological problem solvingengages the students like
metalinguistic knowledge andthey're generalizing, it doesn't
go far enough to ensure thatthey have all of the correct

(07:53):
information about either thepronunciation of the prefix
suffix or root, or the meaningof it.
So what we have done in ourwork with educators is we've
tried, and we've succeeded, Ishould say, in creating some
lessons that provide explicitinstruction with an opportunity

(08:15):
for students to apply thislearning in a larger context.
So going beyond the single wordreading and applying it to
informational texts, and Alexcan say more about why we chose
informational texts as ourplatform.

Alex Osburn (08:34):
Yeah, so thanks, Melissa.
Morphology again is such anamazing tool for upper grade
level teachers.
I think that it brings togetherthe idea of, you know, syntax
and semantics and all theseother pieces, and we decided
that instead of teachingmorphology in a siloed way where
teachers were, you know,engaging in, maybe like the

(08:56):
morpheme of the week, where thestudents learn the morpheme,
they generate some additionalwords, they learn the meaning
and then maybe it goes up on abulletin board, we wanted to
really integrate this idea andthere's a lot of research right
now kind of about thismulti-competential approach.
You know several differentresearchers.
Stephanie Soler recentlypublished about this integrated

(09:17):
idea.
Our work is really influencedby Mary Ann Wolfe, who publishes
really extensively about thebenefits really of teaching kind
of across the five aspects ofword knowledge, so phonology,
orthography, semantics, syntaxand morphology, and I know she
was on a podcast with you girlstalking all about that.
So you know the idea ofintegration.

(09:38):
So you know silos are out,Integration is in, Tell your
friends.
And we really wanted tointegrate morphology not only by
teaching all those word aspectsbut also connecting that to
connected text and content areainstruction, because the
morphemes alone are not themagical ingredient, right, the
true power lies, I think, inthinking about morphology as

(10:01):
this link that Melissa justmentioned between linguistics
and language comprehension.
So you know, we want to makesure that students are able to
take their knowledge of themorpheme and then expand their
vocabulary and backgroundknowledge to learn new content,
to learn things that they'relearning in school, ultimately
using those morphemes as a toolto enhance their overall fluency

(10:24):
and comprehension.
So you know, in the classroom,what this might look like is
that you are teaching yourstudents about world wonders.
So maybe you've identified theColiseum as a landmark that
you're going to be talking aboutand studying with your students
, kind of in a context of alarger unit.
And you've also identified thatyou want to talk about the root

(10:44):
word tract, which means to dragor pull.
So you maybe have a list ofwords that your students are
going to work with soattractions, attracted, detract,
extract, contractor and yourstudents will learn and study
those words and ultimatelyencounter them in a text about
the Coliseum.
And then they'll learn the wordretractable, which means

(11:06):
capable of being pulled back, inrelation to this large canvas
awning that the Colosseumoriginally had to be able to
protect spectators from the sunand rain, which is really cool
and the idea really is that whatyou're doing is students are
densely populating theirsemantic neighborhoods and
creating these strongconnections between word study

(11:27):
and world knowledge in this way.

Lori (11:30):
Yeah, oh, my gosh, okay.
So I want to just just doubleclick on the idea of connected
text and just make sure that weare giving it a moment, because
everyone listening might bewondering, like, what is
connected text?
And I'm going to take a stab atthis.
I feel like you're learning allof these morphemes and the

(11:51):
connected text is actuallyseeing them live in text, where
students are learning about atopic or a concept that they're
naturally studying in class,right?
So it's connected to socialstudies, connected to a science
topic, but we're being veryexplicit about these morphemes
or suffixes or whatever it mightbe that we're we're like really

(12:13):
trying to hit home.
Is that an accurate start to aconnected text?

Melissa Orkin (12:18):
Yeah, so connected, exactly.
So I mean technically connected.
Text means any group of wordsthat are meaningly grouped
together, so that could be likea phrase or a sentence.
We're talking about it, as yousaid, lori, in like a larger
passage and, as Alex said, youknow how do we use it in a way
where students are also takingwhat they now know about word

(12:39):
parts.
She was using tract and talkingabout how they're using their
knowledge of tract to learnabout these features of the
Roman Colosseum.
So how do you take thisknowledge about morphemes and
apply it to this content areapassage where you're learning
new things about a particulartopic?
So it's this like nice seamlesskind of thread between learning

(13:02):
you know these kind of wordrecognition skills and
comprehension skills and thenapplying them in real time to a
passage.

Lori (13:11):
Okay, that's so helpful.
I just want to make sureeverybody out there, we've
leveled the playing field.
We're all in the samedefinition of connected text and
I just want to say, Alex, Ilove the way you said semantic
neighborhoods.
I just want to say, Alex, Ilove the way you said semantic
neighborhoods.
That is such a great way toexplain it and I really
appreciate and I think ourlisteners will too the examples

(13:32):
that we gave to make this reallyconcrete.
I can see how that is just sohelpful in in the integration
piece, so moving from silos tointegration.
Thank you for those, thoseexamples.

Alex Osburn (13:45):
Absolutely.
Yeah, you know, I thinkteachers love examples.
We want to know exactly.
You're telling me somethingreally amazing and I want to
know how to do it, becauseteachers are such doers.
I feel like everyone listeningwill be trying to do this
tomorrow in their classroom, sowe definitely want to be able to
make this super tangible forfolks.

Melissa (14:01):
For sure.
So, speaking of doing ittomorrow in their classrooms,
and well, yeah, this will comeout when they're back in their
classroom.
So yes, when they're in theirclassrooms tomorrow and making
it super tangible, we areactually going to walk through a
routine that is all about thisintegrated morphology.
It's explicit, and you all havesome really concrete steps, and

(14:22):
we have really exciting.
We have examples from a teacherwith students actually doing
this work that we're going tolisten to and talk all about.
Before we get too deep into it,though, can you all just first
give us a quick overview of allthe steps in the routine, so
that our listeners can jot themall down, and then we'll go back
and dive into each part alittle bit more.

Alex Osburn (14:45):
So what you're going to want to do is you're
going to backward plan a lesson,and so we will talk a little
bit later about what that lookslike.
But the steps will be thatyou're going to first want to
build some background knowledgefor your students.
So step one, build backgroundknowledge.
Step two would be to learnexplicitly, to teach explicitly
the prefix, suffix or root thatyou've chosen for your students.

(15:08):
You're going to then practicereading single words that have
that prefix, suffix or root.
You will read sentences withyour students.
I think we're on step four.
Step five will be a vocabularyactivity.
Now, inherently, morphology isgoing to be vocabulary, but
we're going to talk about usinga frayer model.
Step six you can do somespelling instruction.

(15:30):
And then step seven you'll dosome, you'll read the passage,
you'll put it all together andwhat have you got?
So those are the steps in ourroutine, but certainly can be
modified by anyone to fit theirinstructional time or routines.
But those are some of thesuggested steps that we endorse.

Melissa (15:47):
All right.
So before we even go back intothose steps, let's talk about
what a teacher would do to planfor this lesson before they even
dive into the first step.

Melissa Orkin (15:56):
Yeah, so, as Alex mentioned, you know we
backwards plan and we have foundthis to be like one of the
single most effective ways inwhich to ensure that the lesson
that you're teaching ispreparing students to read a
passage or to read connectedtexts, that we want to make sure
that the sentences, the words,the vocabulary, the prefixes,

(16:19):
suffixes, roots they're going tosee those and so you're sort of
previewing all of that withthem in the lesson.
You're giving them all of theseopportunities to kind of drill
or practice them before theyhave to integrate all of those
skills as they're reading apassage, which is inherently a
pretty complex challenge.
So you choose a topic.
So for this we chose the topic.

(16:41):
This was part of a thematicseries of lessons that we were
doing, so our overarching themewas the rainforest, and so this
particular lesson was aboutinsects in the rainforest and we
looked at some of the mostcommon prefixes, suffixes and

(17:02):
roots.
As a teacher, if you're aclassroom teacher you might be
aligning this with some of yourcore curriculum resources for
the morphemes that you'reteaching in your units.
You might be.
If you're a reading specialist,you might be aligning it with
some of your interventionresources.
So we chose our prefix, and theprefix for this unit is going

(17:26):
to be sub, which is also spelledas sup, s-u-b as in boy, and
S-U-P as in power.
And then we generated a passageabout the insects of the
rainforest and we wanted toinclude lots of words with sub

(17:47):
and sup.
And so, you know, we wrotethese.
As a team, we develop a numberof different curriculum
resources.
As an educator, you mightalready have a passage that
you're choosing from, like youmight be learning about, you
know, the solar system orgeography, and you might have
those passages and you mightjust want to pop in a couple of

(18:07):
words that have this prefix subor sup.
Or this is where you could usea tool like ChatGPT or some of
the AI generation tools to dothis.
This is not casual, it's noteasy.
I mean, it's definitely easierwith these tools, but it does
take a little time.
But I would say the time thatyou allocate towards creating an

(18:31):
aligned lesson to the passagepays off tremendously in
students ability to manage thetext fluently and to understand
what they're reading.
And so we generate the passageand then from there we pull out
some of the sentences, some ofthe single words, an appropriate

(18:52):
vocabulary word, so that we'regoing to teach those steps prior
to the student reading thepassage.

Melissa (19:01):
Excellent.
So we want to hear this right.
We want to hear this in action.
So we're going to actually heara clip from a teacher who's
introducing the prefix sub andsep to their students.
Do you all want to say anythingabout that before we listen?

Alex Osburn (19:17):
The only other thing before you would jump
right in is we did talk a littlebit about doing some background
building for your students,right?
So students are probably comingto you with varying levels of
knowledge about the rainforest,about insects.
So you might do something likea KWL or you might have some
sort of multimedia clip or youmight read a short paragraph to

(19:39):
your students, kind of orientingthem to the topic and saying
that we're going to be learningabout this prefix, sub and sup,
while also learning about, youknow, insects on the rainforest
floor.
So you might read somethinglike the floor of the rainforest
is home to countless insects,like the colorful morpho
butterfly and assassin bug, andjust kind of build up a little

(19:59):
bit of their background and keythem into some of the key
vocabulary that they'll belearning.
And then, once you've done that, you're going to dive right in.
Melissa, you're going to doexactly what you just said.
You're going to introducestudents to the more theme.
You're going to do what Melissamy Melissa I love all the
Melissa's have suggested interms of kind of combining a

(20:20):
morphological, problem-solvingapproach with some direct
instruction, and so in the clipyou'll hear that teacher kind of
engaging in that work, whereshe's pulled some sentences
directly from the text and she'stalking about the meaning of
the prefix, the differentspellings of the prefix and
again utilizing those sentencesin this introductory process.

(20:40):
So are we ready to hear it?
Let's listen.

Teacher (20:43):
Prefix.
That has two spellings.
Okay, look over here.
The letters for the firstspelling are S-U-B and it's
pronounced sub Excellent.
Sub means under or from below.
That's our meaning, okay, sowatch me, and you're going to do
the same.
We're going to read this firstsentence in our head and we're

(21:05):
going to talk about the wordthat has the prefix.
Are you ready?
Everybody kind of read it inthe head or you can whisper read
Go ahead, Okay, great.

Students (21:12):
Let's read it out loud the brown side of their wings
allows a morpho butterfly tosubmerge itself in leaves and
hide from predators.

Teacher (21:23):
So the target word here that has our prefix is submerge
, and submerge, you're thinking,means to go under.
So the morpho butterfly goesunder the leaves.
Are you picturing that, okay?

Students (21:38):
And why?

Melissa Orkin (21:38):
would it go under .

Teacher (21:40):
To hide from predators To hide, that word to hide from
predators.
Do you know it?
It's camouflage.
Camouflage, that word to hidefrom predators, do you?

Lori (21:45):
know it, it's camouflage, camouflage, camouflage.
You might have heard that.

Teacher (21:47):
Great.
Okay so that's one spelling ofour prefix.
Let's read it Sub.
There's another one.
Watch this.
It's a quick-a-rooski changeReady, Sup?
Yes, it's sup.
Say sup.
So sup means the same thing assub, but it has two different
spellings to help withpronunciation.
Okay.
So sup or sub means under orfrom below.

Students (22:11):
Wait also Also.

Teacher (22:13):
Yeah, they mean the same thing, it's just two
different spellings.
It's like a bonus.

Students (22:16):
Because, like you can't do like sub-word.

Teacher (22:17):
Yeah, so now what I want you to do same thing.
We'll read this in our head.
Whisper read yeah, go you to dosame thing.
We will read this in our head,whisper read yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, okay.
And let's read it out loud eachinsect has unique traits that
support the special habitat.
So the word that has the prefixis support, so support meaning

(22:39):
we like hold up, like keep itgoing yeah, to hold up kind of
like carry it from below right.

Melissa Orkin (22:45):
Yeah, you know, I think what you hear, and that's
our, our amazing colleague,sarah gannon.
She is modeling this.
Um, I think that you hear herdeliver this instruction
explicitly, in that she's bothtelling the students in a very
clear way how to pronounce it,um, what the meaning, um, what
the morphine means, but thenshe's also using other explicit

(23:06):
instruction techniques.
So you hear her modeling.
You hear her engaging all ofthe students in choral reading.
You hear her checking in forcomprehension after each
sentence, doing a little bit ofvisualization.
She says what are you picturing?
So you know, these activitiesreally lend themselves to this
great integration of all ofthese different aspects, of both

(23:29):
word recognition and languagecomprehension.

Melissa (23:32):
That's what I was thinking.
It's like, instead of justbeing a random sentence about
submerging, right, you knowthey're they're learning about
this topic, they're learning,you know, you can hear them
learning about camouflage andwhat it.
Oh, they're going to besubmerged, right, like you hear
that, along with the learningabout the morphology.
So it really, I mean, it justfeels good to hear that, that

(23:55):
they're learning some learningboth of those things at the same
time.

Melissa Orkin (23:59):
Yeah, and they also love being able to share
what they already know aboutcamouflage.
But they already know, maybe,about butterflies and that sort
of making all those connections.

Lori (24:08):
Yeah, yeah.
Something that stands out to meis that it's very verbal.
There's a lot of languagehappening for the students.
They're saying the words there.
You can hear them making senseof it, so I love listening to
them trying to figure it out.

Melissa Orkin (24:23):
And so, teachers, as you're planning this lesson,
something that we do also is webold the word that has the
prefix or suffix, so it's reallyeasy for the students to
recognize.
We might preview those wordswith them beforehand as well, or
any other language in this inthe sentence, if we feel like
it's going to be challenging forthem.

Alex Osburn (24:44):
I also really love that she handled that like
prefix assimilation kind of veryeasily.
She simplified it for kidsSometimes it looks like sub,
sometimes it looks like sup.
You know, if her kids hadquestions she could have done
something like let's try to saysub, port, right, like, oh, that
feels like it's stuck in mythroat, that doesn't work.
So again, I think she did sucha nice job of introducing that

(25:07):
and the kids just got it,because I was thinking too there
might be some words that haveespecially I was thinking of the
S-U-P.

Melissa (25:26):
Like, the first thing I thought of was super and I was
like, well, but super meansabove right, and we're saying
sub and sup mean below.
Do you also address it like?
Sometimes you'll see, knowthese letters together, but
they're not always going to bethis morpheme.
That means this yeah.

Alex Osburn (25:44):
so you know, I think sometimes we use language
like it's an imposter or like alook-alike, like sometimes these
words look like they have themand like amazing job, word
detective, like you are likebeing curious and thoughtful and
I love that you're looking forthese chunks, but in this, this
word, it just doesn't apply.
But I do think that, yeah, it'ssomething great to celebrate
with kids when they are lookingfor those things, but also being

(26:05):
able to say like nope, thatone's trying to fool us, that's
not quite right.

Melissa Orkin (26:10):
The RAVO program has a really fun way of
describing it.
So instead of calling themsuffixes, they call them ender
benders, because they come atthe end of the word and they
bend the meaning of the word.
And then when they seesomething like mother or father
or super, as you said, melissa,they call them pretender benders
.
So that's also a fun way ofacknowledging that.

Alex Osburn (26:32):
And that's so tangible for kids, like they
understand that.
Like, oh, they're justpretending, yeah, yeah.

Melissa (26:37):
That's super helpful.
All right, so let's here goinginto our next step.
We're going into sentencereading.
Do you all want to tell us whatwe're going to hear?

Alex Osburn (26:46):
Yeah, so keying up to sentence reading, you would
read the words kind of in asingle word format and that
could be just a list of thosewords.
You could also break them outinto, maybe like a word matrix,
where you break up the wordsubmerge and then put it all
together depending on the levelof scaffolding you want to
provide for your students.
So you would read some words insingle words format and then

(27:07):
you would jump into sentencereading so you would apply those
words that you read as singlewords into sentences and what we
recommend really is kind ofscooping those sentences into
syntactic phrases, so theprepositional phrase and others,
to make sure that you'resupporting kind of fluency and
comprehension at the same time.
So when we hear the clip you'llhear the teacher kind of

(27:31):
supporting students as theycorally read kind of in these
scooped phrases, and then you'llhear her ask some really great
questions that are going to besupported, that kind of that
sentence level comprehension,and they'll be able to kind of
refer back to those scoops forsome of the answers all right,
let's hear it look up, here weare on.

Teacher (27:52):
We just finished our single word reading.
Let's check that.
And we are on, to everyone'sfavorite.
Look up here sentence reading.
All right, can't wait.
All right, you guys know how todo this, but I'm gonna remind
you when we read our sentences.
You're going to see thesescoops and I'm gonna hold my pen
here and that's your chance toread that first scoop in your

(28:13):
head and then, when I move myscoop, we're gonna read it all
together and then we'll repeatthat so everybody gets a chance
to read it in their heads first.
That's really important.

Students (28:22):
Okay, go ahead the butterfly shimmering wings
subtract from the darkness ofthe forest floor.

Teacher (28:35):
now let's put it all together.

Students (28:36):
We can read it Ready the butterfly's shimmering wings
subtract from the darkness ofthe forest floor.

Teacher (28:46):
So this sentence is about the what.

Students (28:48):
The butterfly's shimmering wings.

Teacher (28:50):
So the shimmering wings of the butterfly.

Students (28:52):
So you're picturing those wings the morpho butterfly
.

Teacher (28:54):
I love that, thank you.
And what are the shimmeringwings of the butterfly do?

Students (28:58):
subtract so it like light up the fourth floor.
So it yeah subtract.

Teacher (29:04):
How do you think of subtract?
Normally, subtract means toremove, so if you have a number
six and you subtract two, youtake away so subtracting to take
so it takes, remove so theshimmering wings, take away, or
they light.

Students (29:21):
You're thinking it lightens up the what the forest
floor it's like lighting thepath.

Teacher (29:26):
Because the forest floor is what what's the word
it's dark, the darkness of theforest floor.
So the morpho butterfly doeswhat.

Students (29:33):
The wings.
It lights up the forest.

Teacher (29:35):
Yes, so are you thinking about the two sides of
the butterfly's wings?
Because here we learned aboutthe what the dark side and now
we've got a lighter side.

Students (29:46):
I think the light side may be on the bottom, because
if it were on the top it wouldreally light up that well.
Or maybe one side is for like,one side's, for like seeing and
kind of being.

Teacher (29:57):
Maybe attraction and one side is for camouflage
Camouflaging.
I love it.

Melissa Orkin (30:02):
Yeah, so I think you heard here, as Alex said,
you know, first we broke up the.
These are longer sentences,right?
These are compound sentences inmany cases and so we want to
give kids some guidance as towhen to breathe through these
sentences and how to even kindof break up the sentences into
its meaningful groups or phrases.

(30:23):
So we call that syntacticphrasing.
So the butterfly shimmeringwings, so that's kind of the
noun phrase or what we wouldthink of as the subject, who or
what the sentence is about.
Subtract, so that's the verbphrase or the predicate From the
darkness, that's the first prep, or the predicate from the
darkness, that's the firstprepositional phrase of the
forest floor, that's the secondprepositional phrase.

(30:45):
So I think the phrasing isgreat because it helps with
pacing when students are readingand prosody, but it also really
supports comprehension becauseit allows them to, within a
sentence, break up who or whatthe sentence is about, what are
they doing, where, when, how isit happening?
Sometimes those prepositionalphrases come at the beginning of

(31:07):
the sentence, Sometimes theycome in the middle, Sometimes
they come at the end, and soguiding students visually with
the scoops is really helpful.
And also, as you heard, theycorally read, read again to
maximize engagement.
You know this is straight outof Anita Archer's handbook on
explicit instruction strategiesand that allowed them to.

(31:31):
We had them first read itsilently, then corally read and
then read it again so that theyhad it smooth, so they weren't
cold reading it aloud.
For the first time they hadsome practice.
Yeah.

Melissa (31:45):
That's what I was going to say.
I loved hearing it.
It's hard because we can't seethe scoops, we can't see that
visually, but you could hear itright.
When you heard it the firsttime, you could really hear them
in those phrases.
And then the second time, youknow, it was like, oh, I'm just
reading it more naturally, butthey've had that chance to think
about it in those phrases and Ilove that you're bringing it.

(32:06):
You know that helps, yes, withfluency, but it also helps with
comprehension as well.

Melissa Orkin (32:11):
And we can, we will make this lesson available
in your show notes too.
So if educators are interestedin kind of seeing what this all
looks like in print, we're happyto share that Excellent.

Melissa (32:21):
I'm sure they will All right.
So the next one is thevocabulary activity that you
mentioned, alex, and that's withthe Freyer model.
We broke that up into a fewdifferent clips that we're going
to listen to so they can hearthe different steps even of that
.
But set us up for it, alex,because I know a lot of people
are familiar with Freyer models,but this might be a little bit
different.

Alex Osburn (32:42):
Yeah.
So this is not that I shouldpick favorites, but this is my
favorite part of the routine.
I love the Freyer model.
It's really designed to expandstudents' knowledge and
associations with some of thesekey tier two vocabulary terms
that feature the target morpheme.
And so we all know that tiertwo vocabulary from Beck and her
colleagues are reallycharacterized as words that you

(33:03):
know appear frequently inwritten language, maybe less
frequently in spoken language,and really have high utility
across multiple content areas.
And so in terms of the routine,we recommend pulling a tier two
vocabulary word from thepassage, something that has that
target morpheme, ideally sothat again they're seeing that
morpheme again, and using afrayer model with your students.

(33:26):
So I think probably a lot ofour listeners are familiar with
the frayer model, kind of thatquadrant with the word in the
center and you're doing asentence, a definition, examples
, non-examples, et cetera.
And we find that the Freermodel is a super powerful tool
when it's used not as anindependent activity but really

(33:48):
as a teaching tool, where youhave pre-populated each of these
quadrants and you're revealingeach of them, which I think
we'll get a chance to listen to,which is really amazing, and
through a collaborativediscussion you're talking to
students about the definition,you're talking to students about
the sentence, and that sentenceis a sentence that they didn't

(34:08):
generate on their own, which mayor may not represent their
understanding of the word, butit's a sentence that you've
written that shows really themeaning of the word.
Then there's a really coolactivity with examples,
non-examples, which I think canbe really hard.
When I was doing fair models inmy own classroom, students would
come up with crazy things likewell, the word is treaty.

(34:29):
So you know, a non-example is apotato and yes, I mean that is
right, they are right, but youknow it doesn't really tell me
if they understand what a treatyis or not.
So this kind of offering themscenarios and they do kind of a
thumbs up, thumbs down, like isthat an example of this word, is
it not?
And then wrapping up theconversation with a series of

(34:50):
questions that again arebuilding out that semantic
neighborhood, those richassociations, neighborhood,
those rich associations.
And really the reason why wewant students to have this
really deep knowledge is so thatwhen they see the word, all of
those meanings, all of thoseconnections are firing, they're
fluently calling it up and theircomprehension is also triggered
.
So I would love to hear theclips.

(35:11):
I know you've broken it out andmaybe we could just kind of
talk about each of them after wehear.

Melissa (35:15):
Absolutely, and I'll just say I had very similar
experiences with Freyer models.
You weren't alone, thank you,and the word that they are going
to do is substitute, substitute, yes, okay, yeah, all right,
here's the first one.

Teacher (35:29):
So today we are going to talk more about our prefix,
sub and sup, right, and we'regoing gonna do our vocabulary
routine and then we will go onto our starting of our story
reading so we can get to theassassin and the morpho
butterfly.
All right, you ready?
All right.
So, as I told you, we're gonnatalk more about this word today,

(35:51):
in particular, it's substitute.
Say it with me so substitute.
Give me a thumbs up if you knowthe prefix.
Do you know it?
What is it?
So you got it.
So I'm gonna read a sentencewith sub and then we'll talk
about the meaning.
My grandmother decided tosubstitute applesauce for oil
when making the chocolate cakefor my birthday.

(36:12):
So what did she do?
She substituted.

Students (36:17):
It's like you substitute honey for maple syrup
.
Yeah so you are you thinkingabout?

Teacher (36:22):
it, you switch it, you switch it.
All right, let's see what thedefinition is.
It's in this case we're usingit as a verb when something
takes the place or performs thefunction of another thing.
Does that make sense how weused our sentence?
So we're substituting, we'reswitching it out, as you guys
said.

Melissa Orkin (36:40):
Yeah, so she's providing the context first, so
she's introducing it with asentence which is not always the
sequence that we use when we'retalking about vocabulary, but I
think you could see itautomatically activates in one
of the students' minds thisexperience that she had of
switching out honey.
For what did she say?
Maple syrup.

(37:00):
Yeah, yeah, so she's, she'sconnecting that with her
existing knowledge.
And then, um, sarah, the edu,the teacher provides, like the
you know, technical definitionand, um, obviously, listeners,
you can't see this, but there isan image of um, uh, uh, woman
baking with woman baking with achild, so that they can kind of

(37:22):
also have the illustration orthe visual support.
So now they're going to go intothe part of the routine where
they are determining which ofthe sort of scenarios that Sarah
describes are examples ofsubstitute and which are not

(37:43):
examples of substitute.

Teacher (37:45):
All right, next up, we're going to think about some
associations.
We're going to be thinkingabout more about the word
substitute.
So for this, you're going touse your thumbs, like we usually
do.
So I'm going to read somethingand if you agree that one of the
examples I'm reading is anexample of substitute, you're
going to give me a thumbs up.
What if it's not?
If it's not, yeah, you're goingto do a what Thumbs down.

(38:08):
All right, are you ready?
Okay, which of the followingare examples of substitute?

Students (38:13):
Ready, wait it has to say substitute.

Teacher (38:15):
So you'll see?

Students (38:16):
No, it's like substitute without saying
substitute.

Teacher (38:20):
So if to say substitute , so you'll see it's like
substitute without saying so.
If it means the same thing assubstitute, yeah, all right, are
you ready?
When coach sends in a newplayer, giving the original
player a chance to rest, doesthat mean substitute?
Does it something takes theplace of?
Yeah, it's kind of likesubstituting.

Students (38:37):
Hold on on, let her finish then you can do it.
Like you know, like subs, A sub, Like in soccer or like
whatever, yeah, Sport.
Like you would be like oh blank, and then you high-five them.

Teacher (38:48):
Do you suppose that sub is a shortened form of the word
Substitute Maybe?
What were?

Students (38:53):
you going to say Like substituting is like it's not
taking its place permanently,it's just doing it for like a
few.

Lori (39:01):
Could be just for like a temporary.

Teacher (39:03):
Okay, here's another example when you switch one
ingredient for another Is thatan example, because that's the
same thing as the grandmother'slike oil.
All right, are you ready whenthe school play is canceled
because there was no understudyfor the lead role?

Students (39:19):
Does it even have anything to do with having an
understudy would be a substitute.
Now.

Teacher (39:24):
Right, but if there's no understudy, they had to
cancel it.

Students (39:27):
Which cancel, wasn't something.

Melissa Orkin (39:30):
Yeah, so this is where they're getting to engage
in process with the examples and, as Alex said before, you know,
having these pre-planned by theteacher really allows for kind
of the appropriate associationsto develop rather than it being
a little bit too free form forthe students to generate.

Alex Osburn (39:50):
Right, and I think I mean I think it's so hard to
think of things on the fly,right, Like when you're trying
to teach academic language andyou're trying to think of
examples or non-examples.
It can be really really hard,so kind of thinking those things
through.
I also love that, like themoment where they realize like
subs in you know, soccer is likefor short for substitute, like
amazing, like I just feel like,and then, connecting to the idea

(40:12):
of the understudy, I just feellike you can see the connections
forming and the wheels turningas they make associations to
real life scenarios that thesekiddos have certainly
encountered.

Lori (40:24):
Yeah, one thing I'm thinking about too is like the
way that the Freyer model isused here is just so effective.
Because when students are trying, are just learning, this like
this is still new to them.
We're asking them to do the mostdifficult cognitive process in
a typical Freyer model, wherethey then fully, deeply

(40:46):
understand the meaning of theword and then have to export it
from their body, usually inverbal or written form, and that
is difficult to do, I would, Iwould dare say, even as an adult
.
To come up with these threethings takes some time and
thought, right, and I mean,obviously we're being
intentional because we'reteachers and we're choosing

(41:07):
selective scenarios, but I thinkwhen I see this in action, it
makes me really want to shift myown practice too to do it in
this way, because it's honestly,it's faster, because it's
honestly, it's faster, it's moreefficient and it's more
effective because students arenot having to do something that
with their knowledge that theyjust learned.

(41:28):
We know that's not, that's nothow like learning works.
You don't, you're not reallysuper good at something when you
just learn it, right?
So, um, I like how this isreally like I'm thinking of it
and I don't know if this is howyou're thinking of it.
I'm thinking of it as a reallyintentional scaffold for making
those um, or strengthening thosesemantic networks or

(41:49):
neighborhoods, as you said, alex.

Melissa (41:52):
Yeah, yeah, and I was going to say, laurie too, even
the non-example here, you know,it's like yours, alex, it's not
potato, right, it's notsomething completely unrelated,
but it gave them something, evenwith understudy in there.
You heard him say like, yeah,but an understudy would be like
a substitute, so he still wasable to, like you know, make
even more meaning from thenon-example.

(42:12):
So it wasn't just somethingrandom, so it really was
intentional, those examples.

Melissa Orkin (42:18):
Yeah, analysis, as Lori said, is always going to
be easier than generation, andso when you're thinking about,
you know what is an initialstage of learning.
It's going to be analyzingscenarios to determine whether
or not they fit, and then, ifyou're wanting students to go
further, could they generatetheir own scenario, right?
So so I appreciate you pointingthat out.

Lori (42:39):
I appreciate how you made it sound very nice what I said
analysis versus generation.
I was like exported from theirbodies their bodies.

Alex Osburn (42:56):
So the last clip will be the opportunity for the
teacher to scaffold a furtherdiscussion, kind of responding
to some questions, wherestudents would be again applying
their knowledge of the wordsubstitute Great.

Teacher (43:04):
So I want you to think.
What are some reasons you mayneed a substitute when playing
sports.
So think for a minute.
Why might you need a substitutewhen playing a sport?
You can talk to Mayfiel.
What are you thinking?

Students (43:21):
So if, like, the lead player is hurt or tired or
something, they're going to haveto switch out for another
player yeah, cause like theycan't really play, do I say it?
Sure, do you have a?
Um?
Yeah, it's like they get tiredtoo, but like yeah, I agree.
So you guys, somebody might gethurt.
Miles said and we have saidsomebody hurt or tired.

Teacher (43:42):
You need a substitute.

Melissa (43:43):
I love it Alright.

Teacher (43:45):
so now we're gonna switch, so bees will go first,
so you'll you'll speak first,and then you'll switch, and and
Miles will then speak.
How is a substitute differentthan someone who holds a
position permanently?

Students (44:00):
Well, because, like the person, Wait, can you read
that again?
Sure.

Teacher (44:05):
How is a substitute different than someone who holds
a position permanently Like?

Students (44:11):
doesn't permanently.
That means like like you'rethere, like you're not gonna
move, you're not.
Yeah, like I'm like, let's saylike I'm permanently on this
team, like I'm not goinganywhere until like.

Teacher (44:20):
Yeah, so you're thinking about teams, but have
you ever heard of a substitutein another way, like a
substitute at your school, asubstitute teacher?
Teacher have you had asubstitute teacher before.
Yeah, so what's the differencebetween a substitute teacher,
for example, and a teacher who'sthere all the time, the
permanent teacher?

Students (44:38):
The permanent teacher is like you're a whole year
teacher and then like if she'sout sick then you would have
like a substitute, let's saylike for like two days or like
yeah, Not like temporary a fillin.

Teacher (44:55):
Do you have an example of?

Alex Osburn (44:57):
something that was substitutes different.

Teacher (44:58):
You agree?
Yeah, so the substitute teacherwould be there only temporarily
, right?

Alex Osburn (45:07):
And wouldn't be there the whole time.
Ok, amazing, yeah, so again,it's just another opportunity to
you know the examples,non-examples, give them some
kind of concrete.
And then again, the opportunitywith those associations and
these questions is you know,what do you know about this word
?
How can you connect with yourown experience?
And even if you don't have someof those lived experiences, how
can you learn from others inyour group?

Melissa Orkin (45:28):
Oh, I was just going to say, you know, I think
it is a little bit.
It's a little bit of a switchin terms of thinking about
vocabulary instruction.
Like we often think ofvocabulary instruction as here
let me define this new term foryou Let me, you know, make sure
that you, you know, now buildthis into your lexicon and start
, and I'll give youopportunities to practice it,
either writing sentences, buthere what we're doing is we're

(45:49):
saying you probably have hadsome type of experience with
this word, even if you didn'tknow the actual word, like
you've had some similarexperience, for example, having
a substitute teacher or, youknow, playing a sports game and
being asked to switch out withsomeone.
So, you know, asking studentsto take what they already know,
you know, and assimilate in thisnew information is just thought

(46:11):
of as like a really effectivepractice for being able to
integrate new terminology intotheir kind of language usage,
whether it's just speaking oralso writing.

Melissa (46:24):
Before we get into our last step, I have a quick
logistical question.
So those three clips were allpart of the vocabulary activity,
so I'm assuming they would allhappen on the same.
It was five minutes total.
We listened to it separatelybut I mean it took five minutes.
But would that happen the sameday as the first few steps, or
is this separated over a week,or does it?

(46:46):
Does it matter?

Alex Osburn (46:48):
Yes, so when we talk to teachers we separate it
out depending on you know theamount of routines they're doing
into a two or three day routinethat will last, you know,
between 15 and 20 minutes, oryou know a 45 minute kind of
lesson kind of all together.
So typically in day one youmight do something like
introduce the affix, you knowjust single word reading and

(47:11):
sentence reading.
Then day two you might comeback to do the vocabulary
routine, a little dictation andthen the passage reading.
So that's how you mightconsider breaking it up.
You know, depending on yourschedule and time constraints.

Melissa (47:26):
That makes perfect sense, all right?
Well, let's hear this last part.
Right?
So we are headed into thepassage reading, but there is a
step before the passage reading.

Alex Osburn (47:34):
Yeah, there's a quick step before.
We won't spend a lot of timechatting about it, but we do
recommend doing some sort of adictation, right?
So we want these students notonly to be able to recognize
these words in text, but we alsowant them to be able to use
them in their own writing.
So we recommend pulling, youknow, words that you've been
working on and maybe even someof the sentences, to do a little

(47:54):
bit of a dictation routine, andthen you know.
One of the only things toreally note about that is, you
know, when you're talking aboutsuffixes in particular, you're
going to want to think aboutsome of those high utility
spelling rules that might comeinto play, right, like the
doubling rule or the drop E orthe change Y.
So that is an opportunity againto reinforce some of those
pieces.
But we definitely want studentsto practice writing some of

(48:17):
those things so that again,they're going to be able to use
them in their own writing.

Melissa Orkin (48:21):
Yeah, and we know that.
You know, if students arestruggling with spelling some of
these longer, more robust words, they probably will avoid them
in their writing.
And so giving them, you know,an explicit opportunity to
practice some of these spellingstrategies, you know, when do
you change Y to an I?
You know, for example, we tellthem, you know well, first you

(48:42):
have to look at the base wordand determine is there a
consonant that comes before theY in the base word?
And then does the suffix beginwith a letter besides I?
So we give them like a coupleof questions that they'll use as
they're considering how toadjust spelling.
So, for example, baby if youwant to add ES to baby, you

(49:05):
would.
So, melissa, is there aconsonant that comes before the
Y in baby?
Yes, yes, and does the suffixbegin with a letter other than I
?
So we're adding ES, no, okay.
So then what we want to do iswe want to change the Y to an I.

(49:26):
So if your answer to bothquestions is yes, you change a Y
to I.
But then, for example, if we'redoing Melissa, the word enjoy
and we add the suffix ing tomake it enjoying, is there a

(49:47):
consonant that comes before theletter Y, no, no, and so we
would not change a Y to an Iwhen we're adding enjoying.
So giving kids just a couple ofquick kind of strategies or
reminders for these spellingrules and lots and lots of
opportunity to practice isreally helpful not only at
ensuring more accurate spellingbut ensuring greater usage of
robust vocabulary in theiroverall writing.

Melissa (50:09):
All right, so we have our passage reading the last
step.

Alex Osburn (50:11):
Yeah, it's like put it all together and what have
you got?
So students are now kind ofready to read the passage.
So I think we'll share a littlebit of a clip where you have a
teacher who's working with herstudents through this process
and you'll notice that she'ssetting the purpose for reading
and connecting that back to thequestions by previewing the

(50:32):
questions that they'll answerand supporting students as they
corally read the text.

Melissa Orkin (50:37):
So the last activity is going to be reading
our story.
So it should look just likethis the Secret Life of
Rainforest Insects.
So what do you think this storyis going to be about?
Rainforest?

Students (50:51):
insects.
So what do you think this storyis going to be about?
In the rainforest, and whatinsects have we learned about?
So far in this lesson theassassin bug and the something
Morpho, morpho.
I don't remember that word.

Melissa Orkin (51:04):
Yeah, so we're gonna read a whole passage or a
whole story about them now, andas we read, I want you to be
thinking about a couple ofquestions in your mind.
Okay, so let me turn this overso you can see it.
The first question is can wecompare and contrast how the
morpho butterfly and theassassin bug use their proboscis

(51:28):
?
What is similar and differentabout how they feed?
Oh, so I think they might bothhave a proboscis and then is it
proboscis?

Students (51:42):
was that what we talked about in the beginning?

Melissa Orkin (51:45):
yes, they might both have a proboscis Miles.
Miles corrected me and we'regonna have to think about how
they use it to feed.
Okay, Go ahead and let's readthe next sentence silently to
ourselves.
Okay, Miles, why don't you readthese sentences aloud to Maeve?
This'll be your turn to readaloud, so put your finger

(52:05):
underneath the word each and goahead and read that, and Maeve
will follow along.

Students (52:10):
Each insect has unique traits that support this
special habitat.
The morpho butterfly is knownfor its two-sided wings brown on
the bottom and bright blue onthe top.

Melissa Orkin (52:23):
Okay, so we already knew this right from
some of the sentences we hadread.
Okay, so let's read the nextsentences silently, and then
maybe you'll read them aloud toMiles.

Students (52:34):
Its blue color is not from pigment, but from tiny
wings, wing structure thatreflect reflect light, creating
a magical effect.
The brown side of their wingsallow the morpho butterfly to
submerge itself in leaves andhide from predators.

Melissa Orkin (52:56):
And what was the word that we noticed?
That has our submerge, whichmeans like to go under.
Yeah, all right.
Should we read this last partof this passage or part of this
paragraph together, silently?
Okay, let's do it Under two.
Was it from To Survive?

(53:16):
Yes, all right, let's do it Tosurvive the butterfly relies on
the forest floor for a supply ofnutrients.

Students (53:29):
It uses its long proboscis or feeding tube to
drink the juice of fermentingfruit.
After feeding, the morpho takesflight.
The butterfly's shimmeringwings subtract from the darkness
of the forest.
I keep going floor forest, sodo you have?

Melissa Orkin (53:48):
an idea about one of our Four Four.
Four Four Four Four Four FourFour Four Four Four Four Four
Four Four Four Four Four FourFour Four.

Students (53:55):
Four Four Four Four Four Four Four Four Four Four
Four Four Four Four Four FourFour Four Four Four Four Four
Four Four Four Four Four FourFour Four Four.

Melissa Orkin (54:04):
Four, four, four, four, four, four, four, four,
four, four, four with Maeve.

Students (54:07):
Yeah, they like stick it in a fermenting fruit and
stuff Whatever's in thefermenting fruit.

Melissa Orkin (54:14):
Now, it juices, it's like wine.

Students (54:16):
And then it says after feeding, the morpho takes
flight.
It's like just after they die,it just goes.

Melissa Orkin (54:24):
And Maeve.
What were?
There were two words here,maeve, that had our um prefix of
the day.
What were they?

Students (54:31):
Supply yeah.

Melissa Orkin (54:33):
And subtract, subtract, and do you remember
what subtract, means?

Students (54:37):
To take away yeah to take away.

Melissa Orkin (54:43):
Yeah, exactly, great, all right, so that was me
, our substitute teacher.
Yeah, and you heard me becorrected by my student as to
the pronunciation of proboscis,which I will never forget again.
Yeah, so you know, I think thatthis is a challenging text.

(55:03):
This is not a decodable text.
I mean there are lots ofopportunities for students to
read words with sub and sup, butit's not a controlled text.
It's at like a Lexile level oflike 740, 800, which is around,
you know, kind of a fourth graderange.
And so you heard that there arelots of complex sentences,

(55:27):
there's lots of language withprefixes and suffixes, and we
want to ensure that we areproviding opportunities for
students, especially with thiskind of support, to apply their
knowledge of these morphemes, toboth increase sort of their
word recognition, to build theirfluency skills and to develop

(55:50):
their comprehension, both at thevocabulary level, the sentence
level and then overall.
At this passage level, we didn'tget to hear how the assassin
bug uses its proboscis, but youheard that they're going to be
comparing and contrasting thosetwo things.
So they're going to be learningabout one way an insect uses a
proboscis.
They're going to be learningabout a second way, and we did
preview the word proboscis withthem when we built background

(56:14):
knowledge at the very beginningof the lesson.
We didn't have audio of that,but so that they are familiar
with this term it's just methat's not familiar with it and
so we we really wanted tostretch them in terms of being
able to use these skills andgeneralize them to a challenging
text.

Alex Osburn (56:35):
Yeah, you know, and I love all of that that you
just said, melissa, I also feellike you could hear in their
voices like the excitement.
They sounded fluent and I feellike, even though it was kind of
a complex text, they werepersevering right.
They were using the skills thatwe had kind of built up and
scaffolded for them to be ableto tackle this challenging text

(56:57):
and they sounded really, reallyexcited to be, you know, reading
that and learning about thesecrazy bugs.

Lori (57:03):
This was such an experience doing this.
Thank you so much for walkingus through.
I feel like I learned so muchand I mean to be perfectly
honest, I love a routine, I lovea clear routine, so this is
awesome.
There's something that I dowant to talk about that you know
lots of teachers might befamiliar with the idea of

(57:23):
syllable division rules, but youknow, we we kind of talked a
smidge about that the idea thatsyllabication alone can be a
little bit tricky and using thismorphophonemic approach, one
that looks at both sound andmeaning, can be more effective
than syllabication only,especially for grades three

(57:44):
through six.
Can you all elaborate on that alittle bit?
Sure, so you know.

Melissa Orkin (57:49):
I'm not a linguist, so I hope I represent
this information correctly.
But you know, what we knowabout language systems is that
they use different ways ofrepresenting ideas in language.
So there are some languages inthe world that rely just on what

(58:10):
we call an alphabetic system.
So, lori, you said amorphophonemic, so that's the
phonemic part.
You know that there is a soundand it's represented by a letter
, so these would be languageslike Spanish and Italian, and so
they rely on essentiallyphonics in order to build words.
And then, you know, words carrymeaning.

(58:30):
Other languages, for example,like Russian and French, tend to
rely more on like a phonemic, amorphological system rather,
where it's more like larger.
I think maybe French actuallyis more phonemic, but Russian
morphology is like this idea ofjust units of meaning, basically
.
And then there are otherlanguages that use syllables.

(58:54):
There are other languages thatuse like logographic, for
example like Mandarin, whereit's symbols that represent, you
know, ideas.
What English is doing is it'scombining both morphemes, which
are the smallest unit of meaningin language, and phonemes,
which are the smallest unit ofsound.

(59:14):
And so what happens issometimes we'll have words that
have a familiar group of letters, but they're pronounced
differently because we're tryingto preserve meaning because
we're trying to preserve meaning.
So, for example, the suffix ed,which is a morpheme, means to,

(59:42):
you know, put a word in the pasttense.
When we say the suffix ed withthe word jump, we pronounce it
jumped right, and did you hearthat kind of t at the end of the
word Versus.
When we pronounce it with theword beg, we say begged and you
hear a d at the end of the word,versus.
When we pronounce it with theword beg, we say begged and you
hear a D at the end of the wordversus.
When we combine it with the baseword want, we say wanted.
So we're adjusting sometimesthe pronunciation because we're

(01:00:06):
preserving the spelling based onthe meaning.
The pronunciation is adjustingbecause of the co-articulation
piece.
The same is true for a rootword like sign, signal.
Signature.
Like sign means a symbol,basically, and a signal is a

(01:00:27):
gesture, a symbol or a gesture,and a signature is like a symbol
of identity.
So it means the same thing ineach of those different words
but it's being pronounceddifferently because of some
shifts in our pronunciation thatoccur.

Lori (01:00:47):
Alex, did you want to add anything onto that?

Alex Osburn (01:00:50):
No, I mean I think you know William Van Cleave, I
think, did a presentation wherehe talked a little bit about,
you know, when we teachmorphemes, again, it can help us
with things like spelling, andso Melissa just talked about
some of those differences.
But, like you know, when youhave a word inspire and
inspiration you know inspirationyou're trying to guess as
you're spelling it like is theer.
You know I-R-O-R-U-R or E-R,but if you know inspire, then

(01:01:15):
you're going to know it's the I.
So I think that again, kind ofintegrating the idea of syllable
types with this idea ofmorphemes is going to be really
powerful and having students beable to be flexible, I think, in
their thinking and uncover someof those meanings more easily.

Melissa Orkin (01:01:32):
Yeah, and interestingly, I mean, one of
the early kind of linguists towrite about this was Noam
Chomsky's wife, carol Chomsky,who in herself was a very
well-respected linguist, and shecalled this phenomenon lexical
spelling, whereas Alex said andI said we're preserving the

(01:01:53):
meaning or the lex, the meaningof the word, that's the lex part
with the spelling, but thepronunciation might shift.

Lori (01:02:04):
Yeah, for me here, just hearing you all talk about it,
just hearing you all talk aboutit, one thing that's standing
out, and that also stood out inthe routine again, was just the
robust oral languageopportunities are really helpful
for students to quote get thisright, to have the opportunity
to hear it be said, to say it,to use it, to repeat it over and

(01:02:25):
over again and then to thinkabout other ways this, you know,
for example, this root could beused.
Melissa, you gave the example ofsignal, signature, signify,
right.
I mean, I'm thinking theremight not even say that I can't
think of any words right nowwhere it's saying sign, sign.
I was like there's another onewhere it's not saying that sig,

(01:02:47):
right.
So that is so important andagain, that that verbal piece of
like we're orally making senseof this together and having
those opportunities to read andthen to write.
Like you said, dictation was apart of it.
So it's a really like robustand very full circle opportunity
to make sense of this in a waythat's more than just

(01:03:08):
syllabication.
You're really exploring, youknow, like you said, that sound
and the meaning.

Melissa Orkin (01:03:14):
Yeah, you know, I would encourage educators, even
if you've, you know, dabbled inmorphology before or you've
used some routines, like Alexwas.
You know, we've all been veryvulnerable in trying something
out like a Frere model or tryingto kind of like teach, you know
, a prefix or a suffix inisolation, and it doesn't go as
well as we want and sometimes wejust kind of abandon that

(01:03:35):
because we feel overwhelmed bythe prospect of trying to unpack
what went wrong whilemaintaining all of our other
responsibilities.
But I do think that the keyhere is, as Alex said, is
breaking down silos and tryingto offer an opportunity for
students to build theirdifferent aspects of word

(01:03:55):
knowledge with the morpheme.
So how do they think of it in avocabulary word?
How do they think of it whenthey're spelling?
How do they think of it in apassage or even just sentences,
like even just starting withsentences?
If a passage feels too daunting, that can just be really
helpful for your students.

Melissa (01:04:14):
And you all said something about, is it?
60% of unfamiliar words,especially for students in
grades three and above, can bebroken down into these morphemes
.
Did I get that?

Melissa Orkin (01:04:25):
right, oh yeah, so you can't do much with a word
.
Without a morph, with just abase word, you can't get very
far in terms of our language.
Our language would be very,very simplistic.
It would be like dog sit, itwould be very, very simple.
So we need those morphemes.
I mean, morphemes are reallygiving us sort of that robust
nature of our language.

(01:04:45):
They're adding description,they're adding different states
of being, they're supporting oursyntax and so most of the words
you know, as text complexityincreases for students and it
happens fast.
You know students go fromreading fairly simple sentences
with kind of predictablevocabulary to reading, you know,
longer texts and novels, andthen to be using reading as

(01:05:10):
their primary tool for learning.
You know we read words in 150milliseconds.
We cannot compete withdelivering information in an
oral way.
So we're handing childrenworksheets, we're handing them
textbooks or maybe not anymore,but we're handing them reading
material and we're asking themto use this material to learn

(01:05:30):
about the solar system, to learnabout ecology.
So they're going to beencountering all of this robust
language and they need both theautomaticity to get through that
text so that's the fluency partbut also the strategies to
understand these longer and kindof novel words that they're

(01:05:51):
encountering.
So it is a really greatalignment with this stage of
upper elementary school.
And they also you know, I find,and maybe Alex can speak to
this too you know they'velearned the code of phonics but
the code of morphology and theidea of unpacking that you know
morphemes like roots, like tractand scribe, and port and sub

(01:06:15):
and sup and able, they havemeaning and that they can kind
of be metalinguistic about thosemeanings and generalize it.
They're like it's a really coolway for them to think about
language is having thisadditional code that they can
use and apply to all of thesedifferent texts.
And they love to find, as yousaid, melissa, words that break

(01:06:38):
the code and words that followthe code.
And that's fantastic, like thatmeans that they're paying
attention and that they'reacting as little linguists when
they're interacting with pasttext.

Lori (01:06:49):
Yeah, Okay, so you've given us so much to think about
today, so many practicalapplication ideas and also lots
of knowledge about morphologyand how important it is.
Oh my gosh, I cannot wait forteachers to hear this and to
grab all kinds of amazing ideas.
I'd love for you to just kindof finish this out with just

(01:07:11):
maybe like one thing forteachers to think about as they
close out this podcast episode.

Melissa Orkin (01:07:17):
Oh my gosh.

Lori (01:07:20):
One thing Just try the routine.
That would be my take.

Alex Osburn (01:07:22):
That would be mine, Well, I'll say that mine is
that all roads should lead toconnected text, right Like
backward plan from a connectedtext.
See what you have that alreadyhas some of these morphemes in
it.
Build up a routine, use some ofthe routines we've talked about
today to get yourself and yourstudents into that connected

(01:07:44):
text, to apply those discreteskills in that connected text
and content areas and I thinkthat you'll see engagement,
motivation and skills increasingexponentially.

Melissa Orkin (01:07:56):
Yeah, I agree, and I think don't underestimate
the amount of practice I thinktoo that students need in
applying these skills and the.
You know the additionalopportunities that you can give
them, like the cycling back andthings to um, to afford them
chances to really um, use thisknowledge.
I think you know yourconversation about tech sets and

(01:08:18):
like you can do that you knowas well with these um, um,
prefixes, suffixes and roots,kind of bringing them back over
and over again as you'restudying a particular theme or
unit, whether it's therainforest or the solar system
or what have you.

Lori (01:08:34):
Yeah Well, thank you so much for this conversation.
We really appreciate you bothcoming on and talking all about
it, all about morphology, sothank you for being here.

Alex Osburn (01:08:44):
Thanks for having us.

Melissa Orkin (01:08:45):
Yeah, thank you, enjoy teachers.

Melissa (01:09:16):
Enjoy.
Teachers leave us a five-starrating and review on Apple
Podcasts.
Just a quick reminder that theviews and opinions expressed by
the hosts and guests of theMelissa and Lori Love Literacy
Podcast are not necessarily theopinions of Great Minds PBC or
its employees.

Lori (01:09:22):
We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to
learn with us.