Assessing Etymological Understandings

The following extract is taken from PETAA Book The Alphabetic Principle and Beyond...Surveying the Landscape, edited by Robyn Cox, Susan Feez and Lorraine Beveridge, published in 2019. This piece is from a chapter contributed by Lyn Anderson and Ann Whiting.

  • Does the student share the word stories from the classroom investigations with others at school and at home?
  • Does the student question or wonder aloud where words come from?
  • Does the student hypothesise where a word comes from based on their current knowledge (for example, a Greek word because it has a medial < y > or the diagraph < ph >; or the diagraph < kn > and the trigraph < ugh > which indicates old English origins)?
  • Can the student use etymological resources to identify the origin of a word with support or independently?
  • Does the student use their current knowledge of etymological stories to spell function words?
  • Does the student understand that words have entered English from other languages and time periods?