It’s NOT Greek to Me! {a review}

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Building vocabulary is an important element in educating our children. Learning Greek morphemes is a terrific way to accomplish this so I was thrilled to receive It’s NOT Greek to Me! from Ready to Teach. As a member of the Homeschool Crew Review team I received the Student Book, Instructor Manual and a USB flash drive containing PowerPoint slides. Also included was a hole punch and jump ring to help assemble the flash cards (it is so much fun receiving surprise bonuses!)

You may be thinking vocabulary-building may be a good thing, but what is a morpheme and what does Greek have to do with it?! To put it simply, morphemes are prefixes, suffixes and root words. Our English language is built on the root words of older languages, like Greek. When we understand the meanings of Greek root words and see them put together with a certain prefix (at the beginning of a word) or suffix (at end of a word) our vocabulary naturally grows by leaps and bounds.

Over the course of 12 lessons, students learn various Greek root words as well as prefixes and suffixes. Each lesson contains 16 words. With the help of the PowerPoint lessons and flash cards, which are included in the instructor manual, your child will add about 200 Greek morphemes to their vocabulary arsenal.

In the first few pages of the Instructor Manual, the parent/instructor will find detailed information on how to teach this course. There’s even a recommended lesson plan to help you plan out the weekly lessons. Also included are an answer key, review activities, tests, and the flash cards (more on these in just a moment.)

This program does not spoon-feed students a long list of words and meanings to memorize and regurgitate, but encourages them to build words using the small word parts (morphemes) they have learned in each lesson. This not only adds new words to their vocabulary, but gives them the tools to understand new words they may come across in the things they read through out life. Having the ability to break down a words syllable by syllable, root, prefix, suffix will give them the ability to decipher and discover the meaning of words that are totally new to them.

I mentioned the flash cards earlier. At the end of the Instructor Manual, you’ll find pages containing color-coded cards you can cut out and store on a jump ring. This handy tool is small enough to keep in a pencil box, desk drawer or even a pocket. Having the morphemes for each lesson handy for study is just one of the many reasons It’s NOT Greek to Me! is so effective.

The recommended lesson schedule is one lesson per week – 20 minutes per day, 5 days a week. You could easily adapt the pace to suit your student and circumstances. For us, it goes something like this:

• Day 1 watch the PowerPoint presentation that goes with the lesson, taking notes and getting familiar with that week’s morphemes.
• Add study cards for that week’s lesson to the jump ring.
• Do the work for half the words (find the morphemes, and identify the meaning to form a definition).
• On day 2 and 3 work the other half of the words.
• Day 4 finish the various activities such as creating words and finding definitions using the morphemes.
• On Day 5, review and test.

I have been impressed with this program, but my favorite part has got to be the PowerPoint slides. They do the teaching for me! On each slide the information is all laid out and easy to follow. My daughter can plug in and get right to work. It really is an out-of-the-box, open-and-go program.

It’s NOT Greek to Me! can be a supplement to any language arts program. It would also be an excellent tool for students preparing for ACT/SAT exams. I am using this with my high schoolers, but would recommend for middle school students and older (and adults too!)

See how other homeschool families are using It’s NOT Greek to Me! – just click the banner below.