Nemea - I Forgot the Greek and Latin!

Yesterday as I wrote about Nemea, my mind was more on pins, needles, and fabric. So much so, that aside from a brief mention of teaching Greek and Latin in my classroom, I forgot to include some things I'd filed away to add to that blog post. I'm fixing that today.

The last twelve years of my teaching career I taught a gifted 4th and 5th grade class. (Oh, how I loved having kiddos two years!)

My language arts program was solidly based on Greek and Latin roots and their underpinnings in the words we use every day. (I.e., "bio-" means "life," "-ology" means "the study of," therefore "biology" is the study of life.)

Elliot, Cody, and Brooke building words on the board and throwing in some Greek letters for fun. 

Brooke just got married last summer and is an engineer in Indianapolis. Madeline, another of my students, is in her third year teaching 4th grade. 

Katie learning the Greek alphabet and practicing spelling her name.

One of our favorite word activities was what I dubbed "Scrolls." (Sam, the boy in the blue sweatshirt is now an author and sent me an autographed copy of his first book!)

A team of 2-3 kiddos would take a Greek or Latin root and start finding all the words they could that utilized it. They'd write their words  down on "scrolls"(cash register tapes) that I provided.

Honestly, the first time I did it, I was stunned at how far they took that activity - I thought that MAYBE some would find 200 words or so, and that would be it. Instead, I ended up giving them a week to find their words and some of the kids even took their scrolls home to work on after school!

Believe it or not, this is an actual scroll unwound down the hallway.

Being a little goofy and measuring the length of a scroll by "kids" instead of yards, feet, and inches or the metric system.

Sometimes I tried to rein the kids in by reminding them that they did not need to go overboard, but there were always students who honestly loved the challenge of finding their root in words. (This scroll has 1300+ words. Look closely.)

The last day of the project, we'd share our favorite words, how many we'd found using only our brains, how many with help from online sources, and calculate the grand total the class had found. (Oh, my goodness - I just noticed the word "unicorn" is on that white board! I tell you, they are everywhere!)

See now why I am leaning towards making Nemea my first BreyerFest choice, even though I do not care for shelf-eating molds? 

This was just one activity I did with my students as we studied Greek and Latin roots, but I might share another. If I do, you may remember the "kid" whose photo I'll include.

Stay 'tooned!