Red Hot Root Words: Mastering Vocabulary With Prefixes, Suffixes And Root Words (Book 2)

I have Book 1 and now Book 2. I purchased this in anticipation of using it with middle school English learners next school year. I have loaned my Book 1 to a colleague, and it has been very well received by the students. The packets are easy to make and work through with students and provide a stepping stone into understanding how words are spelled and pronounced the way that they are.

I am 67 years old and have a masters degree.........I only say that to point out that I have taken a lot of classes during my lifetime. The best class, and one class that stuck with me throughout my entire life was my high school Word Power class taught by Miss Derr (she will never know the number of lives she influenced). If we were on a college track we had to take Latin (learning those root words even though I didn't realize it at the time) and the natural follow up class - Word Power......learning prefixes and suffixes. I don't think a single day of my life has gone by without me referencing something from my word power class, breaking down new words for their meaning, and habitually thinking through prefixes and suffixes on words I know. Ask my wife........I'm constantly pointing out what I originally learned many, many years ago in high school. This book looks like it will be a good refresher course for me! Soak up everything you can on root words, prefixes and suffixes........you will apply it every day of your life.

This is a collection of challenging spelling/vocabulary units based upon Greek and Latin roots, prefixes and affixes. While it says it is designed for 6th through 9th grade, I am currently using it with my fifth grade class. I have found that I have to supplement the book with other tasks that assign as part of a weekly packet, because this book only provides one practice page per unit (hence the four stars instead of five).Through use of this resource book, I have already observed growth in my students' vocabularies, especially due to the fact that many of the words from these units appear in our content area studies. I encourage my students to draw these connections by passing out tickets related to our positive reinforcement classroom program whenever one of our past words is identified in a text, lesson or discussion. They have to identify the word and define it to earn their ticket.If you are looking for a strong support text for your spelling and/or vocabulary element of your literacy curriculum, this is a great way to go!

Someone pointed out that book 1 and book 2 have the same roots, etc. So I got book 2. For the intermediate ESL students I have, the vocabulary is a bit too difficult. In the future, I will go with book 1, since my goal was to focus on the roots, prefixes, and suffixes. This book throws the focus on the difficult, high-level vocabulary instead.

This is a good basic book to learn common prefixes, suffixes and root words. We are studying for the SAT, and I think this book is helping. Many courses offer "flash cards" or lists of vocabulary words, but the trick is not to memorize thousands of words and their definitions - they may or may not end up on the test. Learn how words are built, and you can break them down into their parts and use that knowledge to help you arrive at the correct answer on the test. If you aren't prepping for a test, it is still good to learn the building blocks of words. It will help you in your studies.

Overall, the book is okay. I personally prefer language-building books that present the student with good definitions first, instead of having the student sort of "guess" what a new word means by context clues. It's difficult to guess by context clues when learning roots because many of the words can be similar in meaning or use.

My son found this very helpful in preparation for his test.

Review from 10 year old user:"I like using this book. It gives you a little bit of a head start in figuring out what unfamiliar words mean."

Very informative and easy to use.