The title of this blog comes from a quote by Groucho Marx: 'Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. ' I love the use of the antonyms outside - inside and the unexpected humour. Yes, this seems somewhat of a stretch to use in a blog for teachers about words, but the choice comes from the connection to books.
Words are the stuff books are spun from, the raw material to create images, bring characters to life, to turn the plots. In fact the word text comes from the Latin verb texere: to weave.Word study leads to deeper reading, to increased comprehension, to rich word choice in writing. We believe that through analysing words, justifying the orthography, students are engaged at a high cognitive level. We hope books, through the study of words, do then become your students' best-friends -or at the very least second only to dogs!
This site then will focus on word-study :the etymology, morphology and phonology of words. This site extends the knowledge gained from our workshops, provides suggestions for the classroom, links for both you and your students and hopefully an eclectic 'wordy' treasure trove.
For your first exploration into the world of etymology and morphology, investigate the following words:
- How are they connected?
- Arrange from oldest word to newest word
- Identify the root and the language
- Divide the words into morphemes- how many of the words are single morphemes (free base elements), how many two or more?
- Explain the doubling of the letter
in doggedly
We are indebted to the work of Melvyn Ramsden and his Real Spelling material which first set us off on our word quest.
Images from "Tales of Outer Surburbia" by Shaun Tan
