How to Teach Greek and Latin Roots: Engaging Strategies

Engaging students while teaching Greek and Latin roots can be quite the challenge for teachers. Read on for vocabulary and engagement strategies when teaching Greek and Latin roots.

I love taking a supposedly dry, boring topic like Greek and Latin Roots (according to most of my 5th grade students) and finding ways to captivate my students while building their vocabularies. I love the history of words and learning about their quirky connections fascinates me.

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One of the fastest ways to get a kid to hate school is to give them a boring worksheet with challenging vocabulary words that are seemingly unrelated and have the students complete the worksheet on their own. Ugh, I hated typing that sentence just thinking about the silent torture that vocabulary can induce in our students.

The bar for improving vocabulary study is so low, that it really doesn’t take a lot to make it somewhat better. So what is a teacher to do if they don’t want to torture their students by droning on and on about stems?

Why Should We Focus on Greek and Latin Roots?

The English language has somewhere between 1,200,000 and 2,000,000 words and thanks in part to technology, more than 20,000 words are estimated to be added each year.

Research consistently finds a huge connection between vocabulary knowledge, reading comprehension, and doing well academically in school. While it was originally estimated that students naturally add between 2,000 and 3,000 new words each year, fifth grade students are estimated to come across 10,000 new words each year.

You can learn more about teaching syllables here.

Why Should We Teach Greek and Latin Roots?

It is estimated that nearly 75 percent of English words are derived from Greek or Latin. A Latin root generates somewhere between 5-20 English words.

Take the Latin root, spect, which means ‘see.’ You get spectacles, spectator, expect, spectacle, spectacular, inspector, suspect, respect, inspect, perspective, and speculate. This doesn’t include the spelling variant spic, which also means ‘see.’

Researchers consistently agree that teaching Greek and Latin roots is a powerful way for teachers to help develop their student’s vocabulary. So, how do we make it less boring and more engaging?

Engaging Students While Teaching Greek and Latin Roots

While I am by no means an ‘expert,’ I have been around for quite a few years as a teacher, earned my master’s degree as a reading specialist, worked for many years with students who struggle with reading and vocabulary, and have gone to many, many trainings on reading programs. In addition, I was a terrible student as a kid, bored out of my mind and disengaged most of my days.

So, when I think about teaching vocabulary, not only do I want to know what to teach, but also how to make it more engaging.

Research on effective vocabulary instruction seems to include:

Get students reading independently. We learn more new words through reading and listening than directly teaching.
Direct instruction with planned words each week. While reading gets the most words learned, teachers need an actual plan when it comes to the words we mean to intentionally teach.
Students need to connect new words to existing knowledge in a meaningful way. Look for similarities and differences in words, activate background knowledge and create connections.
Repetition, repetition, repetition. Students need frequent opportunities to read new words, say new words and write new words in a variety of context.
Teacher read-alouds help develop vocabulary. Check out my Teacher Read Aloud post here.
Teach context clues and word parts. Students are more successful in learning new words if they know how to figure out the meaning of an unknown word by getting help from the words, sentences and text features surrounding the unknown word.
Word roots and word parts help students to break down words into units of meaning.
Students can research the history of a word’s origin. This is a great activity for students who ace a spelling pretest. What do they do for the whole week, study more for the 100% they got on Monday? No, have them research the etymology of a word and present it to the class!
Make time for students to play and explore word games during the day. Puns, riddles, word scrambles, riddles, tongue twisters and word puzzles are a great way to extend the enjoyment and engagement of word study.

How should we NOT teach vocabulary? Do not make kids look up words in a dictionary to ‘learn’ the definitions. This is just an activity someone is doing to be compliant, not turning the students into Shakespeare.

Resources to Start Teaching Greek and Latin Roots

I have accumulated a quirky set of resources over the years to help invite my students into enjoying vocabulary instruction.

Set a purpose for WHY we take the time to learn new words. This is especially important for learning Greek and Latin roots. I love to kick off with this clip from the movie Akeelah and the Bee. In it Akeelah wants to memorize a ton of words, but her tutor, the wise Laurence Fishburne, tells her the key is to break down all of the big words into their smaller parts (roots).
I share this picture, a rough historical family tree of languages so students can see all of the connections of the English language. I know the family tree of languages are much more nuanced, but I like this picture for my fifth grade class because I am just hoping to share the visual connectedness of language and words.

Language Family Tree- Proto-Indo-European

After setting our purpose, and looking at the language family tree, we talk about the frustrations of why English is such an awful language, at least in terms of spelling. I take the time to empathize with my students about how awful the tricky spelling rules of English can be. One of the reasons is that English is a language that has morphed and borrowed from other languages, causing words to have, at times, very odd spellings. This TedEd video covers the history of the English language. I like to show it to my fifth graders as I feel it helps, but I don’t think I would show it to any students younger than that, because it might be more confusing or over their head with history.
Finally, to cap off my initial introduction to the study of vocabulary (and language in general) I like to show the students this time lapse video of the changing numbers of language speakers over the past century. I have never seen such excitement for students to watch a time-lapse bar graph before. It makes teaching fun. I want to preface, I am not sure how accurate this video actually is and I took the time to discuss with my students how a few countries, China and India specifically, have very large populations and a few languages are spoken throughout the country, which most likely had an impact on the bar graph video.

Videos to hep teach Greek and Latin Roots- History of the English language

These video resources help to add breadth and depth as to why English is such a wacky language.

Where did English come from? This Ted Ed video does a fantastic job of visually showing how the English language has morphed and changed over the years. Aside from the historical language aspect, this video also does a nice job of briefly talking about why words like school are spelled with the /ch/ digraph instead of ‘skool’.
Latin and Greek roots and affixes. Did you know that Khan Academy covers more than just math topics? They have a fantastic array of vocabulary and grammar videos. This video is about 6 minutes long and does a nice job covering the ‘why’ of teaching & learning Greek and Latin Roots. At about the 5 minute mark of the video, they cover a very brief history of the English language. This would be a nice intro video for students whose focus may be on the shorter end.
Short History of the English Language
Latin and Greek Root Words

Resources to Make Teaching Greek and Latin Roots More Interesting in Your Classroom

I have accumulated a variety of resources for teaching vocabulary over the years and have organized my materials on a table in a google doc that I am easily able to share with other teachers in my school district who are teaching the same material. This way it is easily organized by stem and I know exactly where to look when I need something specific. I bookmark my table as a webpage and have quick immediate access to the vocabulary resources each day.

I have compiled word lists for commonly used Greek and Latin Roots. Check out my post here- The Ultimate Greek and Latin Roots Word List

Stems digitally organized in Google Drive

Membean– I LOVE this website . . . and I only use the free version. I can’t imagine how much better it could be if I was lucky enough to get a paid membership. They are the best for teaching vocabulary in an engaging manner. For many of the stems I teach, they have a 2-3 minute podcast that creates connections to these words all over the place! Every podcast has a song bite at the end that connects to the stem being discussed in the podcast. I really love the thought that goes into using the definition of each word, it explains very nicely how each word is related to the stem. The one negative is that it is hard to search to see if a specific stem has a podcast when you are on the Membean website. It might be that I have the free access, it might be better with a paid account. Either way, I have found typing ‘Membean podcast’ and the specific stem I am looking for into google, gets me the quickest result.

Tingo– This website hasn’t been updated in a while, but it is still a gem. I love using the supercilious video when teaching the stem super. Some of the videos seem like they would be more appropriate for older middle school or high school students due to the content in the video, but it is a nice way to engage students.
Interactive Notebooks- I like the visuals and tactile engagement that interactive notebooks creates. There is nothing that says ‘this is important to learn’ like taking notes, cutting them out and gluing them into a notebook. I haven’t found any one specific product on Teachers Pay Teachers that I use that meets all my needs, but I have a few teacher sellers that I mash up together to use. I really like interactive notes that have a visual, with the stem and the meaning. I like the interactive notebook options by Mandy Neal- Teach with Simplicity and Lovin Lit. Both of these interactive notebooks are a really nice option for my visual learners. The only problem with both of these, through no fault of their own, is that I have a specific school district list of words I need to teach and it does not match the words they have created in their notebooks. It is very hit or miss and searching for the stems I need can feel a little overwhelming.
Kinesthetic movements- One of my amazing teaching counterparts created hand motions for each of the stems that we teach. During the pandemic and the height of online distance learning, they took the time to create quick videos for each group of stems taught each week. She posted it to YouTube and we have a nice collection of movements for our kinesthetic learners. This is a great resource for students who are absent as well, because they can always watch and rewatch the clip as they need. We post the video link on our Google Classroom page.
Fun Vocabulary Read Alouds- I like to share various word origins and excerpts from books that highlight the absurdity and fascinating history of the words and phrases we use each day. Crazy English by Richard Lederer is a delight for kids. I have edited some of the phrases from the first chapter, as the book is intended for adults, but the kids love how wacky the English language can get!

Word and Picture Puzzles- These are great for those short snippets of time where you need a few minutes to fill. I love to post a page on my document camera and display on the board. The students can partner up to discuss what they think each brain teaser means. This is a great way to increase the enjoyment in learning about the English Language.

Brain Teasers Rebus Puzzles

The Best Brain Puzzles

Wakeruppers: A Spirited Collection of Thinking Activities

Word Etymology Presentation– In the years that we did a spelling pre-test at the beginning of the week, I would have a few weeks where students would ace the pre-test. Any time someone got 100%, I didn’t give them more words to study. I gave them a fun project to work on. They were rewarded with no spelling worksheets for the week and they instead used their time to pick a word, from a list I shared, and researched the history of the word. I had the students use the websites- fun with words, Learn that Word, and my favorite, etymonline. Students needed to research the date the word was originally used, the language/country of origin and find a picture related to the word. They would then share their presentation with the class on Fridays after the rest of the class took their spelling test.

Color the Greek and Latin Root– Looking for Greek and Latin Roots Stems vocabulary activities to engage students? Students will expand their vocabulary and understanding of Greek and Latin affixes & morphology and generative vocabulary with these 37 visual activities to highlight or color the Greek and Latin Root in each word. This is perfect for teachers who are new to teaching Greek and Latin Roots and educators looking to find a variety ways to bring UDL (Universal Design for Learning) into the classroom!

Greek and Latin roots and stems morphology vocabulary activity – Color the Root worksheets for grades 4–10 ELA

Morphology Word Searches– Looking for more practice with teaching word morphology? I created targeted word searches based off of common prefix, suffix and root words. You can check them out here. I also made a free Phobia suffix word search- Phobia Suffix Free Word Search

Printable Greek and Latin roots and stems word search puzzles – vocabulary and morphology practice for grades 5–10

Prefix word searches with Greek and Latin roots – printable vocabulary puzzles for ELA prefix and root word practice

Making Words– I created this product for my Teachers Pay Teachers store. It is an engaging way to get students working on their decoding, spelling and vocabulary knowledge as they make smaller words from the larger mystery word. Check out my Back to School Freebie. It includes the answer key and would be easy to use as a whole class, small group or center activity. Here are a few of Patricia Cunningham’s Making Words Books if you are interested to learn more:
- Making Words
- Big Words for Big Kids

Caesar’s English– WhenI started teaching 5th grade I was handed this book and told to teach the material in it. There was no professional development or any workbooks purchased for the students, I was just expected to give the students knowledge. This book is a good start for someone looking to add Greek and Latin Roots into the classroom. I did feel like I needed to pull extra materials and supports to help engage students.

Develop Your Own Love of Words, Vocabulary and Greek and Latin Roots

Nurture your own love of words by becoming a lover of language. I have found these books are great for professional development and some are just an interesting read.

Greek and Latin Roots– This book is filled with great insights into developing a thoughtful practice of vocabulary instruction.

Any book by John McWhorter is a fascinating dive into language. Words on the Move was pretty interesting, but I really enjoyed Nine nasty Words: English in the Gutter.

If you are upset easily by swear words, this is not the book for you. If however, you find vocabulary and the discussion of language boring or you are interested in the history of words, you might like this book. In this book, McWhorter discusses the history of 11 specific curse words and how they have changed over time.

Bill Bryson also has a fantastic book, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way. This is an interesting book that explores the origin of the English language and how it has changed over time. Bryson does a great job breaking down complex information and keeping the reader entertained while doing it. I love his writing.