Greek Morphemes Lessons {Review}

The Good & the Beautiful's High School Language Arts courses feature a series of learning Greek and Latin word roots.  This practice helps to build vocabulary and a deeper understanding of word meanings.  But what if you wanted to go even further than learning just a few word roots...take it to the next level?

Being a history-loving family, we are all about some classical languages.  We have been studying Latin, alongside the children, for two years now, but recently had the chance to review Greek Morphemes Lessons (It's NOT Greek to Me!), by Ready to Teach.  

We set aside our Latin studies for a few weeks, and focused solely on Greek.  I was afraid that trying to teach both at the same time would get a little confusing, but turned out to be pleasantly surprised.  By the end of a few weeks, they had a better understanding of both Latin and Greek and were able to 'decode' the big words in their literature and science books!

We received a student workbook, instructor's manual, and a usb stick with powerpoint lessons.  I really liked how the program uses different modalities for teaching.  We orally went over the weekly words, and then visually followed the powerpoint lesson as they broke each word into its roots.  Each lesson had a self-review at the end for feedback.  Also included on the digital materials were color-coded transparencies that help to reinforce note-taking skills and allow the student to kinesthetically  experience each word as he wrote it down.

The Instructor's Manual is broken down so that each lesson encompasses a week, or five mini-lessons.  These include taking notes, breaking down words, using contextual clues to determine word meaning, creating your own words, and self-assessment.  At the back of the book is a set of perforated flash cards for each of the morphemes in the book.

Our family's personal favorite section of each lesson was the "create your own words" part -- we tended to get silly very quickly!  BUT they remembered the word roots, because they were using them to create their own silly words.  And let's face it - silly can be a great tool for getting information into the long-term memory!

The Student Book follows the same format as the Instructor's Manual, but with room for note-taking and actually writing down the exercises.  It is simple, yet effective, and I found that even my youngest child (early elementary age) was responding well to the exercises.

Each day, we did one part of the lesson (part one on Monday, part two on Tuesday, etc).  We only used the PowerPoint twice each week, but it was enough to visually reinforce the lessons for my children.  On Fridays, we played silly games and tested ourselves on the roots.  It was a great surprise to see exactly how much was retained!

I would definitely recommend this product for middle and high schoolers, particularly ones that are studying vocabulary words for the SAT or ACT.  It's a great program for getting those roots into long-term memory.

Want to try a sample lesson of Greek Morphemes Lessons?