For the past two years I have been working at an international school. It is wonderful to work with and teach learners from such diverse backgrounds and cultures. The new challenge for me has been working with many learners whose first language is not English, and I have embraced this opportunity to work on an area that I wasn’t exposed to as much while teaching in the UK.
I recently took an 8 week BML (bilingual and multilingual learners) course. There were some useful strategies that I picked up and started implementing in my classes. While flicking through the book of strategies, this one on Greek and Latin roots immediately caught my attention.
In Science so many of the words that we use in our lessons are derived from Greek and Latin roots, and while I sometimes make a point of linking to words we have used before (for example when discussing protostars, I make the link to prototype), I really wanted to start going deeper into root words with my classes.
As with many strategies, what is recommended for a specific group of learners is usually also good to use with other learners as well. I will not be restricting the usage of root word exploration to my English as a second language learners, but I will be using it in all of my classes across all year groups.
To that end, I started making root word cards which I will place around my teaching lab. I have made 55 cards so far, but this is a work in progress and I will be adding more as I think of them.
SET 1. You can access the pdf of the first 26 cards here:
SET 2. You can access the pdf of the next 14 cards here:
Update: October 28th 2022. SET 3. You can access the pdf of cards 41-55 here:
Update: November 20th 2022. SET 4. You can access the pdf of cards 56-70 here:
Update: December 17th 2022. SET 5. You can access the pdf of cards 71-85 here:
I will continue working on these cards as I think of some new words to include, and I am sure I have forgotten some very obvious ones in the process! I am always open to feedback, so do let me know what you think.
Fabio Di Salvo 
These are wonderful! Thank you for sharing!!
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Thank you for these cards. I teach 6,7,8 grade. I heard about your cards from an instagram post from mindfulteacherrachel
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Would love to see a card for “tech” for us Technicians to display on our Prep Room doors and/or walls!
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Thank you so much for the root words, they’re great for making links among other things. While putting some up in a classroom I had grouped together “vore”, “herb” and “carn”, and thought it would be even better to have “omni” to go with them. One for the next set?
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can you format these in a 3×5 or 4×6 size so we can print multiple to a page?
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Thank you SO SO SO much for creating and providing these for free! An amazing resource to improve my literacy instruction within my classroom and to help students make links for themselves when they come across new vocabulary.
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Thank you so much for these!
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Hi. These are fantastic. I usually post these high on the walls around the room so when the students daydream and look around the room they are learning, too. However, I saw a typo on one of the cards. In GLOB, you spelled hemoglobin wrong. You spelled it correctly in the Hema part soo I think this was a typo. Just wanted you to know. Thanks for this, 100%.
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I would argue that it’s the opposite way around. Haemoglobin is correct and the “Hema” slide is wrong. Perhaps a version of “glob” with US English and a “Haema” slide for UK English
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These are AMAZING! Any chance you might do a Social Studies set?
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Wonderful. I am teaching a Ukrainian woman the reading and writing needed for citizenship and she got stuck on polygamy – I was able to grab polygon from my memory and she has a math background so that helped. I have shared all of these as well. Having something to connect a new word to makes all the difference.
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Wow! This a very valuable resource. Thank you so much for sharing. I will be printing these and hanging them up in my classroom. I teach students diagnosed with dyslexia in middle school and we work a lot on these Greek roots. Anyway you can add a few for me? gram, ology, ologist, phono, cycle, pyro, meter, psych, path, mania, and audio. Thanks so much! I look forward to hearing from you.
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I love this idea. Where did you take the bilingual course at? I would love to look into this.
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Amazing! Thank you so much for sharing these. I love roots!
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These are amazing! Cant wait for more! Love the design and details!
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Hi – these are great – I love them. I am a literacy coach, and teaching morphology is the biggest new learning strategy that all teachers need to take heed of. I love that you have opened this world to older students and teachers of older students who may not have considered teaching new vocabulary in this way. I love that you have opened this world to Science and Maths teachers.
Teaching morphology teaches also students to spell and it helps their pattern seeking, self teaching brains make sense of new vocabulary…I could write an essay about it.
I am wondering if you would consider a version of these cards with lower case letters in a standard font? Morphology instruction is hugely beneficial to all students – and standard font is easier for many students to read, rather than ‘block’ upper case letters. Your visuals are wonderful and the example words are great too.
Fabulous work.
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Fantastic resource – I love the simple style. These are now stuck all over the corridor for students to absorb. Thank you, Andy
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Thank you so much for your stunning Science vocabulary cards!
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The vocabulary program “Word within a Word” is based on greek and latin stems has more ideas – you should sell them your work – it is amazing and would have made teaching with that resource more fun. Your poster swill be decorating the stairwell of my school within the week!
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Thank you! This will be a helpful resource for my high school multilingual learners.
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Thank you so much for sharing!
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Very useful. Will surely use them with my grade 6 and seven learners.
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LOVE these. Last school year, I taught 6,7 & 8th grade students 100 root words in science class. I taught 10 new words each week, building up to 100 words. They did amazing on the test that was made of the 100. Please keep up this amazing resource.
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Reblogged this on Νότια του Βασιλείου της Δανιμαρκίας.
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These are awesome, and I would love to utilize them in my classroom. However, I can only get 12 of the first set to print and none of the 2nd set. I have tried multiple times over the course of two weeks. What am I doing wrong?
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Reblogged this on SciTechGen.Com.
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Would love hetero and homo like homozygous and heterozygous!
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Thanks so much! This will certainly support my vocabulary instruction for my 5th graders!
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These are amazing!! Thank you so much for sharing!
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I would love to start working on a math set to use along with these. Would you mind sharing what fonts you used?
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love these!!
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These are amazing! I teach root words as we go in our units, this is a great visual!
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These are fantastic, thank you
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These are BEAUTIFUL!! I teach science in inclusion classes for ELs, and these are absolutely perfect. Simple, clear, straightforward imagery, AND example words… I am in love. Can’t thank you enough for these.
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Thank you for this! One of my goals is to enhance my vocabulary instruction.
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These are so great! This is going to make great connections with literacy!
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Reblogged this on Teach Tech Ed and commented:
A wonderful resource here for STEM labs, Science Labs or classrooms
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Hi! I love your cards. I teach science in a school where I work with mostly ESL students so these are terrific. I have a few more for you to add to your list that come up in my lessons a lot! Here they are…
inter (between eg intermolecular), intra (within eg intramolecular), hetero (different eg heterolytic), homo (same eg homolytic, homologous)
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