Folding VKVs into the Study of Root Words

Sometime within the first few weeks of school, I always do Bio Poems with my class. Laura Candler's Buddy Bio Poems lessons are fun and produce great poems that I have on display at our fall open house. Buddy Bio Poems is a partner writing activity in which students interview a classmate and write a bio poem about him or her. This year, I seized the opportunity to do some root word study before writing the poems.

I began with our free Root Word Mix Up Bio Words cooperative word work activity. My students loved moving around and mixing up, trying to figure out together the meaning of the root word bio.

The next day, I showed my students how to make VKVs with the root word bio. The acronym VKV is short for Dinah Zike's Visual Kinesthetic Vocabulary manipulatives. They are designed to allow students to manipulate and change words and phrases. My students shrieked with delight when they saw how they could make multiple words with one folded piece of paper. I used this free template to help them understand how to fold and cut on the lines. I showed them how to first cut on the solid lines, then write the word bio before the dotted line, making sure it was close to the dotted line. Then, I showed them how to fold on the dotted lines and write their bio words.
They loved the results!

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Root Word Mixup:  Bio Words

VKV Foldable Template