Discover how spelling works in only five minutes a week.

One Step Now Education July 22, 2026 endorse In a recent spate of political ads, I kept hearing this word over and over. I imagined my students might be hearing the word quite a bit as well. Were they wondering about the base of the word as much as I was? Would this be a word worthy of study? We'll start with meaning and discover that synonyms aren't just clever wordplay but may help students anchor meaning. We'll look at the prefix <en> and its cognates. A trip to the movies might help us...

One Step Now Education July 17, 2026 vulnerability When you first started studying words scientifically with students, you were taking a risk. Most of us come to our work with our lesson plans and our big brains full of knowledge about words ready to impart it on willing students. Unfortunately, not all students are willing. And some who are willing struggle with the phonology aspect of words. So maybe you went looking for something different and you found scientific word study. In both...

One Step Now Education July 10, 2026 industry Years ago, I looked at this word with a student. It was just on the edge of their understanding so I didn't go into great detail about it. However, I believe there are a few things about the investigation that are worth learning. Before we begin, you might be surprised to find that what looks like a prefix or suffix may not actually be a prefix or suffix. We'll take a look at the features of nouns and the toggling suffixing convention. We'll...

One Step Now Education July 3, 2026 colonization As the States are headed into their Independence Day weekend, I began thinking about this word. A few months ago I was consulting with a teacher, and she was noticing connections to words from another morphological family that were interesting. I thought I'd investigate this word to share those connections with you. This word will come alive in more than just history books as we investigate its meaning, structure, relatives, and graphemes....

One Step Now Education June 26, 2026 emulate As with many words, I spotted the word emulate in something I was reading and started wondering, "What is the base in this word?" This is the kind of curiosity about words and their structures I'm trying to get my students to emulate. Get it? In this investigation, we'll learn more about verbs and sentence frames we can use to test for them. We will also look at the derivational suffix <-ate>. We'll review what a back-formation is as we learn to...

One Step Now Education June 19, 2026 congenial; congenital This is a pair of words I'm always having to sort out in my head like affect/effect. I know that sometimes knowing the structure of a word can help us understanding its meaning better, because the meaning of a word is suggested by the elements that compose the word. For example, consent is composed of a prefix <con-> that lends a sense of "with" to the base <sent>, "feel." So if you give your consent, you "feel with" that person; you...