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9th grade · English Language Arts · Unit 4 of 12

Word Detective

Roots, prefixes and meaning in context

What your child practices

Using prefixes, suffixes and Latin and Greek bases to work out new words, choosing a meaning from the sentence around a word, and subject words like product, mass and scale.

Alabama Course of Study content standard: 9.R7 · roots, prefixes and meaning in context

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Break a word into parts: un- + break + -able = not able to be broken.
  2. Greek and Latin bases help: tele (far), bio (life), graph (write).
  3. Use the sentence to choose a meaning. Subject words like product, mass and scale have special meanings.

Example: “She was meticulous, checking every figure twice.” What does meticulous mean? The clue: she checks every figure twice. That shows great care with details. Answer: very careful about details

Word Detective in Alabama

In the Alabama Course of Study, this is unit 4 of 12 in 9th grade English Language Arts, after Grammar & Style and before Literary Devices.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE)

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    Choose the best meaning of reluctant. “He was reluctant to jump, and kept stepping back from the edge.”

    • eager
    • skillful
    • unwilling
    • tired

  2. Question 2

    Choose the best meaning of resilient. “The resilient team bounced back after losing three games in a row.”

    • easily upset
    • poorly organized
    • able to recover from difficulty
    • very competitive

  3. Question 3

    Choose the best meaning of meticulous. “She was meticulous, checking every figure twice.”

    • very careful about details
    • careless
    • quick and sloppy
    • angry

  4. Question 4

    Which word has a prefix that means again?

    • mistake
    • dislike
    • rewrite
    • pretend

  5. Question 5

    On a map, what does the scale tell you?

    • which way is north
    • the name of the mapmaker
    • how old the map is
    • how map distances compare with real distances

  6. Question 6

    What does the base chron mean in chronology?

    • life
    • time
    • earth
    • word

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