Reading Puzzle: Word Analysis, Grades 4-8

About the "Reading Puzzle Series": In her best-selling book "Teach Them All To Read", Elaine McEwan provides a great discussion of the most current reading research regarding how students learn to read so educators can make informed decisions about instruction. Research about reading has given us insight into the skills on which we need to focus our efforts to improve reading and comprehension. Now we can identify the skills that require reinforcement and intervene with explicit, thoughtful instruction. The activities in "The Reading Puzzle" series will help the teacher accomplish this goal. "The Reading Puzzle" series provides instructional tools teachers can use immediately as part of the reading curriculum. "The Reading Puzzle" series contains 10 books for Kindergarten through Grade 8 centered on the skills identified by the National Reading Panel as critical to reading success. Each of these books in the series helps unlock one piece of the reading puzzle and contains standards-based, ready-to-use activities that can be used to supplement any reading program: Phonemic Awareness - "Grades K-3 Phonics": "Grades K-3 Vocabulary", "Grades K-3 Fluency", "Grades K-3 Comprehension", "Grades K-3 Word Analysis", "Grades 4-8 Spelling", "Grades 4-8 Vocabulary", "Grades 4-8 Fluency", "Grades 4-8 Comprehension", "Grades 4-8". These activity books contain ready-to-use activities that make it easy to put McEwan's highly-successful strategies into practice. The strategies and activities will support struggling readers and enhance existing skill to encourage improvement in all students' reading skills. "Word Analysis, Grades 4-8": Welcome to the world of word analysis! This resource focuses on two areas of learning: essential linguistic patterns (the variations in how letters are pronounced), and essential morphographs (variations of what letters or groups of letters mean, such as prefixes, roots, and suffixes). The goal of the 'Linguistics' section of this book is to assist students in becoming fluent decoders. It will make them aware of patterns they can rely on to aid their decoding speed. You, the teacher, are a critical and vital part of the Linguistics section of this activity book. All of the activities in this section have an oral component. Many activities are geared for whole-class participation and are designed to help students internalize spelling patterns and decode words automatically. The goal of the 'Morphology' section of this book is to hone students' word-analysis skills. Morphology is the branch of linguistics that focuses on word structure and the changes in forms of words. This resource includes practice with root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Students will participate in both written and interactive activities to help them decipher unfamiliar words once they have memorized the meanings of roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Students will discover what a powerful tool word analysis can be!