ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos

ELA 3: Word Families 5 Views


Share It!


Description:

Today's lesson is about word families. Yep, it turns out that words have families just like we do. Hopefully they don't have annoying little sisters that throw spaghetti on them in the morning to wake them up, too. We wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

[Coop and Dino singing]

00:13

Families come in all shapes and sizes... [Mother, Father and Son walking together]

00:16

Small families, big families...

00:18

…one family…two families… red family…blue…family…. [Red family and blue family in a street]

00:21

…hang on.

00:22

That last thing was Dr. Seuss.

00:24

Never mind.

00:25

But the type of families we're talking about today doesn't involve people at all... [Family talking amongst each other]

00:29

We're talking about…drum roll please… “word families"!

00:33

Word families are groups of words that belong together because they are made of the same

00:37

“stuff.”

00:38

…Okay, that's the least helpful explanation we've ever given before. [Person watching a shmoop video]

00:42

Please don't throw stuff at the screen; we'll explain what we mean.

00:45

Ooh, that rhymed!

00:46

Maybe Dr. Seuss rubbed off on us!

00:48

Anyway…

00:49

Word families share a pattern of sound. [People in a meeting room]

00:51

And in many cases, they also have some of the same letters in combination.

00:54

A great place to find word families is in nursery rhymes! [Nursery rhymes book opens]

00:57

For example, in “Jack and Jill went up a hill,” JILL and HILL are part of the same

01:01

word family, since they sound the same and share some letters in combination.

01:05

But let's not leave Jack alone!

01:07

We can quite easily find a whole lot of -ack words for his family, too. [Book turns pages quickly]

01:11

Like…back, hack, lack, rack, sack.

01:14

Or even attack and quack.

01:15

So come back, Jack!

01:16

English does not lack for words like quack!

01:19

See how easy that was? [Girl reading a mother goose nursery rhyme book]

01:21

When you're reading, it can be fun to look for word families.

01:23

You can do this by skimming over a passage and seeing if any phrases start with, end,

01:27

or contain some of the same letters in combination.

01:30

Here's another example:

01:31

Age, cage, wage, stage, rage.

01:34

See how they all contain "-age"? [examples of age word families]

01:35

Word families are pretty cool, once you get the hang of them. [Boy wearing sunglasses while driving]

01:38

We'll leave you with one for the road…how about….cat, rat, bat, brat, chat, mat, sat?

01:43

Yup.

01:43

They're all in the same word family!

01:45

Easy as pie. [Word family written on a piece of paper beside a slice of pie]

Up Next

ELA Drills, Beginner: Point of View 1
14043 Views

ELA Drills, Beginner: Point of View. Is the statement in the video true or false?

Related Videos

ELA Drills, Beginner: Textual Analysis 1
405 Views

ELA Drills, Beginner: Textual Analysis 1. The purpose of the instruction manual was...what?

ELA Drills, Beginner: Point of View 3
90 Views

ELA Drills, Beginner: Point of View 3. Which sentence in the passage best shows the narrator's point of view on the topic of Chelsea Simpson?

Science 3: Sedimentary Rocks and Ancient Buildings
115 Views

We wanted to make a video about sedentary rocks, but we couldn't get lazy uncle Rocky off the couch. Oh well. We'll teach you about sedimentary roc...

Science 3: How Living Things Become Fossils
137 Views

Today we're bringing you the opposite of Jurassic Park—how living things become fossils. Okay okay, it might not be quite as fun...but hey, at le...