Ask: "What words are you curious about?"

High interest reading is always a win!  Choose text that your reader is excited to read and talk about because the topic or genre is in their zone of genius.  While paused at a perfect spot in the text, have some highlighter tape handy and ask, "What words are you curious about?"  These words to highlight may be interesting because the author used related words in the text, the meaning was interesting, or the word just had an interesting spelling that we wonder about!

In this text, my reader was interested in the word <survive> because it was talked about in the text concerning a panda.  She related it to a science discussion about animal habitat where she heard the phrase, "Survival of the fittest," in class.  I wonder if <survival> connects with <survive>?  What could be the base?  Doing a deeper dive into the etymology of <survive> we discover a French base word and new prefix and suffix discoveries.  The meaning of each of the 10 related words deepens her understanding of this new base word.  The prefixes and suffixes have meaning, too.  Now, we are ready to spy these morphemes in other words that spark our curiosity.

Student-led sessions are some of the best!