Breaking Down Words to Build Meaning: Morphology, Vocabulary, and Reading Comprehension in the Urban Classroom

This article opens up with a situation that involves a teacher and her 4th grade class. She reads them an article about the president and asks them what the word “popularity” means. Everyone seems to have a confused look, but one student named Brenda says what she thinks, and that she figured it out because she looked for a word inside that word that she already knew. I think this is a VERY important and strategic method for teaching young children the meaning of words. Breaking them down helps them tremendously. As the article says, if students are unable to break down words and figure out their meaning, they lose comprehension of the text, regardless of whether or not they can pronounce the word. Today, in urban schools, there is an increasing number of English language learners, and these students are less likely to understand complex words. I like the way the article mentions “4th grade slump.” Many students are able to comprehend grade level texts in lower elementary grades, but as they move up, they lose this comprehension because the texts get harder. Many students have a superficial meaning of the word, which causes them to lack in comprehension. The articles also states that students learn 2,000-3,000 new vocabulary words a year and most of these words are learned through context. It is important that teachers know the strategies to teach in order to help their students. Another extremely important thing to teach is morphology which is the study of shape.  It is most promising in improving reading comprehension.  This becomes more important as students get older. This article gives 4 principles of teaching morphology, which I think it very useful and helpful for pre-service teachers, and even current teachers.  I think this article proves a very good purpose, and I hope that I will be able to refer back to it once I have a classroom of my own!

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