Historical references to the Germanic core and, Latin, Greek and French influences help students appreciate troublesome irregularities. Students are encouraged to adopt and invent mnemonic devices, which are highly valued as a tool for improving spelling. Vocabulary Vocabulary development involves various techniques by which students can increase the quantity and quality of words understood and used. The primary approach is through word morphology. Anglo-Saxon, Latin and Greek word roots and affixes are studied at all grade levels.
Students build definitions using their knowledge of prefixes, roots and suffixes.
Class lists span two grade levels and include from 80 to 100 word roots each. These lists were developed to support curriculum in content area studies at the same grade levels. Thus a 10th grader receives roots that are in the vocabulary common to such courses as global studies, biology and geometry. The students are taught to attack unfamiliar words from two perspectives, phonetic and morphologic. Individual word studies often originate from the oral reading text used in class.