Lesson Plan for Monday and Tuesday
1. Instruct students to get out three blank sheets of paper and a pen(cil) (1 minute).
2. Gather students into groups of four. Each of the four in a group will compete against the other three (2 minutes).
3. Pass out the “Group One” sheet to each student (1 minute). You may want each group to have a
dictionary.
4. Use LCD projector to show “Greek Roots Boggle” sheet and explain the directions (5 minutes).
5. Allow the students 5 minutes to come up with their wordlists.
6. After 5 minutes, instruct the students to compare answers, calculate their totals, and rank first through
fourth places. IMPORTANT: Tell them they’ll be doing three rounds and so they should pay attention to and steal the other group members’ answers for the next round (5 minutes).
7. Ask the first place kids to raise their hands and place them into homogeneous groups for the next
round of competition (with a class of thirty kids, you should be able to create two groups of 4-5 kids). Do the same for the second place kids, third place, and fourth place kids (5 minutes).
8. Repeat steps 5-7 for the second round (15 minutes).
9. Repeat steps 5-7 for the third round (15 minutes).
**During the first round, you’ll wonder how effective this is. Students will only have a few points after the first round. But, starting with the second round and definitely in the third round, the kids will come up with long lists of words because they’ve not only “stolen” ideas from former group members, but this also will get them to come up with more on their own by trying different combinations of roots, prefixes, and suffixes**
On Tuesday, perform the same lesson plan, but copy and use the “Group Two” word lists.
I’ve attached a comprehensive list of English words derived from each group of words. Feel free to talk about these with your students. You may also want to copy and give to your students for their reference.
Greek Roots Boggle
This works the same way as the game Boggle – more or less. Look at the accompanying copy of the Greeks roots, prefixes, and suffixes. You have 5 minutes to create as many English derivatives as you can think of from the forms on the list. For every word you create that someone does not, you earn one point. The person with the most points wins.
For instance, let’s say three students (John, Paul, and Ringo) are in a group and they come up with:
John: philanthropy, misanthrope, bibliomania
Paul: philanthropy, misanthrope, megaphone, microphone
Ringo: philanthropy, bibliomaniac*, microphone, telegraphy, aphonic
John gets 0 points because every word he came up with was listed by someone else
too.
Paul gets 1 point for the one word no one else thought of (megaphone).
*Note, bibliomania and bibliomaniac are different forms of the same word:
one is the abstract concept and one is the person who has the abstract concept.
Ringo wins with 2 points because he thought of two words neither John nor Paul
listed (telegraphy and aphonic).
Feel free to challenge your competitors if you think that they have created a compound that is actually not an English word. Remember that you are trying to learn these Greek roots, so the more you discuss the words, the better. When in doubt, look it up! Settle disputes within the group. Your teacher is NOT the judge.
Group One
Roots
anthrop = man; mankind
phil = love
miso = hate
biblio, bibl = book
phon = sound
graph, gram = write, draw, describe, record
scop, scept, skept = look at, examine
Prefixes
eu = good, well
caco = bad, ill
mega, megalo = large
micro = small
macro = large, long
tele, tel, telo = far, distant
teleo, tel, telio, telo = end, result, competition
Suffixes
mania, maniac, maniacal = madness for
phobia, phobiac, phobe, phobic = dread of, fear of
Group One
Roots
anthrop = man; mankind
phil = love
miso = hate
biblio, bibl = book
phon = sound
graph, gram = write, draw, describe, record
scop, scept, skept = look at, examine
Prefixes
eu = good, well
caco = bad, ill
mega, megalo = large
micro = small
macro = large, long
tele, tel, telo = far, distant
teleo, tel, telio, telo = end, result, competition
Suffixes
mania, maniac, maniacal = madness for
phobia, phobiac, phobe, phobic = dread of, fear of
Group One
Roots
anthrop = man; mankind
phil = love
miso = hate
biblio, bibl = book
phon = sound
graph, gram = write, draw, describe, record
scop, scept, skept = look at, examine
Prefixes
eu = good, well
caco = bad, ill
mega, megalo = large
micro = small
macro = large, long
tele, tel, telo = far, distant
teleo, tel, telio, telo = end, result, competition
Suffixes
mania, maniac, maniacal = madness for
phobia, phobiac, phobe, phobic = dread of, fear of
Group One
Roots
anthrop = man; mankind
phil = love
miso = hate
biblio, bibl = book
phon = sound
graph, gram = write, draw, describe, record
scop, scept, skept = look at, examine
Prefixes
eu = good, well
caco = bad, ill
mega, megalo = large
micro = small
macro = large, long
tele, tel, telo = far, distant
teleo, tel, telio, telo = end, result, competition
Suffixes
mania, maniac, maniacal = madness for
phobia, phobiac, phobe, phobic = dread of, fear of
Group Two
Roots
arch, archi = rule, govern
dem = people
gen, gon = kind, race, orgin
gon = angle
gyn, gyne, gynec = woman
log = idea, word, speech
theo = god
geo = earth
helio = sun
dyn, dynam = power, force
chron = time
chrom, chromate, chro = color
meter, metr = measure
center, centr = center
cycl = circle
Prefixes
archae, archa = ancient
hetero = various, unlike
homo = same
olig = few
pan = all
poly = many
mono = one
bi = two
dis, di = two, twice
iso = equal
ortho = correct, right, straight
Suffixes
latry, later, latrous = worship
mancy, mancer, mantic = prophesying, about
divination
Group Two
Roots
arch, archi = rule, govern
dem = people
gen, gon = kind, race, orgin
gon = angle
gyn, gyne, gynec = woman
log = idea, word, speech
theo = god
geo = earth
helio = sun
dyn, dynam = power, force
chron = time
chrom, chromate, chro = color
meter, metr = measure
center, centr = center
cycl = circle
Prefixes
archae, archa = ancient
hetero = various, unlike
homo = same
olig = few
pan = all
poly = many
mono = one
bi = two
dis, di = two, twice
iso = equal
ortho = correct, right, straight
Suffixes
latry, later, latrous = worship
mancy, mancer, mantic = prophesying, about
divination
Group Two
Roots
arch, archi = rule, govern
dem = people
gen, gon = kind, race, orgin
gon = angle
gyn, gyne, gynec = woman
log = idea, word, speech
theo = god
geo = earth
helio = sun
dyn, dynam = power, force
chron = time
chrom, chromate, chro = color
meter, metr = measure
center, centr = center
cycl = circle
Prefixes
archae, archa = ancient
hetero = various, unlike
homo = same
olig = few
pan = all
poly = many
mono = one
bi = two
dis, di = two, twice
iso = equal
ortho = correct, right, straight
Suffixes
latry, later, latrous = worship
mancy, mancer, mantic = prophesying, about
divination