Interactive Notebooks & Morphology

"For children and adults who have experiences failure and minimal progress year-after-year in trying to learn to read, self-esteem and attitude toward themselves as people, and school in general, will deteriorate" (Gillingham & Stillman, 1997). If students continue to stay disengaged with reading and find no progress, their dreams and ambitions begin to fade over time. While students who struggle to read may be very bright, they begin to view themselves differently. One way that I have found to foster the love of reading and help students make huge steps in progress is the use of interactive notebooks. These notebooks not only empower students, but serve as "a varied set of strategies to create a personal, organized, and documented learning record" that students can refer back to (Waldman & Crippen, 2009, p. 52). Connecting to the premise of the multi-sensory approach, interactive notebooks and the graphic organizers included inside serve as a visual representation that help students retain information about given information (Gillingham & Stillman, 1997). Students take great pride in the culmination of the learning they have developed throughout the year. 

Part of the notebooks include lessons in the morphology of English and the history of the written language. By using interactive notebooks and graphic organizers, students begin to gain an appreciation for the background of the language they are learning, become interested and engaged in the content, and developed a better understanding of words and their most basic parts that carry meaning (Gillingham & Stillman, 1997). By learning prefixes, roots, and suffixes through the use of graphic organizers, students become empowered which greatly improves retention and the appreciation of vocabulary. Teaching word meanings through affixes and root words is essential for vocabulary development and in turn, reading comprehension. It has been estimated that students need to learn between 3,000 to 4,000 words per year and must learn 88,000 words by ninth grade to be successful academically (Johns & Lenski, 2010). “Graphic organizers facilitate higher level thinking, serve as retrieval cues to promote learning and they are especially effective in teaching technical vocabulary” (Readence, Bean & Baldwin, 1989). Therefore, they significantly help students to remember word parts and apply meaning in other situations. It helps to mix up instruction and enable the creative side of students as well. 

Examples: 
References 
Johns, J., & Lenski, S. (2010). Improving reading: Interventions, strategies, and resources. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. 

Readance, J., Bean, T. & Baldwin, R. (1989) Content area reading: An integrated approach (3rd ed.). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.

Waldman, C., & Crippen, K. J. (2009). Integrating interactive notebooks. The Science Teacher, 51-55. 


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