Building Vocabulary

Finally a chapter in which I looked at it and said, "I KNOW I'll find something useful in here!"  Teaching math deals with a lot of building vocabulary.  There are thousands upon thousands of terms that students must know in order to really be successful.  Words that they have learned from day one will impact their performance in high school mathematics classes.  Geometry requires the learning of  new and integral terms seemingly every lesson.  Vocabulary is HUGE in math.  Now, how can I help the students learn these terms?

Just by looking at the strategies from BBR, I was instantly drawn to the R^3 Strategy.  The math in me saw exponents and lit up.  But it was not to be.  I think R^3 would be very effective in history and science classes, but there isn't quite enough reading opportunities in math to really utilize R^3.

The strategy I like, though, is Morphologia.  I like this strategy because math uses old terms and Latin and Greek roots.  Though Morphologia does not require the study of the roots by the students.  Rather, they are exposed to morphemes or parts of the word that are easier to understand.  In geometry, each of the shapes have morphemes that help students understand the entire word's meaning.  Words like pentagon and hexagon are perfect examples.  Penta-, hexa-, and -gon are morphemes that draw to five, six, and sides, respectively.    Using words like the aforementioned helps students understand the strategy.  Using morphologia to understand complex math terms can help the students break it down and understand a general meaning.

WA