By the end of primary school, students are confronted with expository texts known for their high proportion of domain-specific academic vocabulary words. These words usually comprise Greek or Latin roots in their internal structure. Recent findings showed that knowledge of Greek and Latin roots is related to reading comprehension. However, no…

When young readers encounter texts that contain too many unfamiliar words, their comprehension suffers. Reading becomes slow, laborious, and frustrating, impeding their learning. That's why vocabulary knowledge is a key element in reading comprehension. To comprehend fully and learn well, all students need regular vocabulary exploration.…

In this article, the authors make a case for teaching vocabulary in the elementary grades through a focus on the morphological structure of words, in particular English words that are derived through Latin and Greek roots and affixes. The authors present a set of engaging instructional ideas for the use of Latin and Greek derivations to teach…