Identify and explain four ways you can use context clues to determine the meanings of unfamiliar words that you encounter as you read.

This is not an imaginary classroom. Leslie Montgomery, who teaches in a high poverty public elementary school, regularly witnesses this phenomenon. Her students have learned the power of using the meanings of prefixes, roots, and suffixes (especially common Greek and Latin roots) to figure out the meanings of words.

As they talk through their reasoning, it is clear her students are developing “morphological awareness,” or understanding about the structure and origin of words. This skill can often seem like magic to kids, but is really sophisticated vocabulary knowledge that they need in order to learn at higher levels.

The third word-learning strategy I want to suggest is that of using reference materials, which is a “beyond-the-word” technique.

Of course we need to teach students to use dictionaries, glossaries, and thesauruses to verify an inference and check the meaning of a word. But we can also teach students how to expand vocabulary into semantic networks by finding synonyms and antonyms in these reference materials as part of their word exploration.

For example, Susan invited her eighth graders to use a variety of digital sources to explore selected words. Students were astounded to find numerous definitions, synonyms, and antonyms for these words in different sources, leading to a natural discussion of multiple meanings and the context in which the word was introduced.

Because middle school students often just choose the shortest definition for a word, this type of investigation emphasized the importance of using multiple sources and considering the most accurate meaning in the context of the text.

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