Ep. 202: Big Words for Young Readers with Heidi Anne Mesmer

Heidi Anne Mesmer discusses her book Big Words for Young Readers. She emphasizes the importance of teaching young readers to decode and understand words with multiple syllables and morphemes. Heidi Anne highlights the need to teach morphemic concepts early on and provides recommendations for teaching different types of morphemes at each grade level. She explains that morphology, the study of word parts, is a crucial component of reading comprehension and vocabulary development. Mesmer provides practical strategies for teaching morphology, such as teaching the morphological principle and using activities like 'Make It Big' to build students' confidence in creating big words. She also emphasizes the need for explicit instruction in morphology from an early age and highlights the benefits of using cognates and word chains to support multilingual learners. Takeaways The book Big Words for Young Readers focuses on teaching young readers to decode and understand words with multiple syllables and morphemes. Syllables are sound units, while morphemes are the smallest units of sound that carry meaning in a word. Teaching morphemic concepts early on can help students...