Category Archives: Independent Practice

On the first day of a very badly needed spring break, here is a worksheet on the Latin word roots ram and rami. They mean branch. This root does not produce a bumper crop of high-frequency English words: it gives us ramification, and therefore ramify–or vice versa, because there is a good chance the verb emerged first. This is a Latin root, and as we know from history, the Romans loved action. However, this root also sprouts biramous (“having two branches”) ramus (“a projecting part, elongated process, or branch,” “the posterior more or less vertical part on each side of the lower jaw that articulates with the skull,” and “a branch of a nerve”), which may actually have use for students interested in entering healthcare professions, and ramose (“consisting of or having branches”).

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Moving right along on this spring morning, here is a worksheet on the Latin word root post. It means, of course, “after” and “behind.” I feel confident that I need not belabor the productivity of this root–and as I write this, I wonder why I didn’t include this root in the two yearlong (one lesson per week) cycles of word root lessons for building vocabulary I wrote for freshman and sophomore English classes. In fact, as you certainly know, post can be attached to just about any noun to form the meaning of “after something.”

This worksheet, in any case, asks students to infer the meaning of the root from such high-frequency English words as postdate, posterior (which also gives us posterity, which is not on this document), and posthumous.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.