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Does your 5th grader know these words? (s/o!)


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OP here. Well, the reason I ask is that this week DS10 was learning Latin words pulmo, pulmonis, cauda, caudae, fera, ferae etc and I was surprised he found them so difficult. And then I realized he didn't know that feral meant "wild" and I was suprised. DH was annoyed because he thinks those are words all 5th graders should know, and he attributes the fact that he doesn't know themm to reading too much Nate the Great and not enough Gulliver's Travels. ("When I was a kid, Gulliver's Travels WAS pulp!! And now it's considered literature! He needs to put down those books blah blah") I said he reads those books in his spare time, and is reading books like Wonder (fantastics BTW) also. And DS strengths do NOT lie in vocabulary. Anyway, thanks for answering!

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I don't even know what caudal means. :tongue_smilie:

 

And you can use the Latin to teach those English words. I asked my son (3rd grade, not 5th), and he didn't know any of the words, even though I have used the word "feral" several times around him. We have a group of feral cats that live in an old, boarded up farm house across the street. I call it the "cat house". :D Apparently, DS wasn't paying attention when I used the word.

 

I don't think I learned the word pulmonary until high school. Not sure when I learned avian and feral. Caudal sounds familiar, but yeah, I need to go look that up. :lol: I've heard about cauda equina syndrome, but I don't think I've ever head/used the term caudal.

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My DD does, but only knows Caudal because she's obsessed with snakes, and when we were preparing for the body parts section of the ELE and was drawing pictures, needed the Latin for tail (and scales). I suspect she knew the other words because of Latin as well-the ELE is heavy on derivatives.

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Ok so my 5th grader did not know these and my 7th grader did not know that other thread words!!! What vocab program are you ladies using???!!!!

 

Some children just pick up words. My boys haven't done much in the way of vocabulary study, but they've read a lot of older books and just absorb the words.

 

Laura

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DD has always been strongest verbally, but I did start her in formal vocab study when I realized in 2nd that vocab was the "limiting factor" in terms of her reading comprehension. She did the two MCT Caesar's English books and is now working her way through Sadlier-Oxford Vocabulary Workshop. She also learns a lot of words through her spelling bee prep.

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