The Nifty Thrifty Fifty : The Nifty Thrifty Fifty (NT50) are words that contain common base words, prefixes and suffixes. To help students learn spelling strategies for decoding and spelling big words, they will learn to read, spell and understand common spelling patterns of the 50 NT50 Words. For each NT50 word a reader knows, (s)he can read at least 7 more words. That means that by mastering the Nifty Thrifty Fifty word list, students can use at least 350 additional words when reading and writing.
Each month, we will focus on 8-10 NT50 words. These words will be posted in the classroom on our classroom Word Wall, we will practice using our words and will apply them in our writing.
Students will be responsible for knowing the meanings of the prefixes, suffixes, and base words, and be able to spell and compose/decompose new and NT50 words accordingly.
Transition Words: Show time order and relative transitions. Examples include: before, then, shortly after, next, later that day, etc.
Greek and Latin roots: Similar to the NT50, we will be studying the meanings of Greek and Latin affixes and roots. However, roots, unlike base words, cannot stand on their own-they must be combined with affixes to create a word. By learning the meaning of these roots and affixes, your child will be able to break down new, unfamiliar words in terms of meaning and pronunciation.
Some examples include mis-, -ful, struct, geo, phone, tele-, etc.
Commonly Confused Words: These are words that are frequently misused or confused for another word. We will examine the words and their meanings, and practice using them correctly in context.
Examples include: to/two/too, here/hear, clothes/close, capital/capitol, etc.
Parts of Speech: We will review parts of speech already introduced (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs). In addition we will work with conjunctions (the FANBOYS), collective nouns, subjects & predicates, prepositions, and, of course sentence struture.