Multisyllabic Words (Classical)

If your fourth grader hits a wall every time they run into a long word, this program is built to fix that. Not with guessing strategies or context clues as a crutch, but with the actual tools — syllable types, division rules, and the Latin and Greek building blocks that make up the majority of English academic vocabulary.

This is a 9-week classical word analysis program. The classical approach means we teach the rules first, drill them until they stick, and then apply them to increasingly complex words. It’s systematic and explicit. Kids aren’t left to figure out patterns on their own.

The first two weeks lay the foundation. Week 1 introduces the six syllable types (closed, open, vowel-consonant-e, vowel team, r-controlled, and consonant-le), and Week 2 teaches VCCV and VCV division rules so your child can actually break apart unfamiliar words instead of staring at them. These aren’t abstract concepts — they’re practical tools that work on almost any English word.

Weeks 3 and 4 move into morphology. Your child will learn 20 common Latin and Greek prefixes and 15 suffixes, and more importantly, they’ll learn how these pieces change a word’s meaning and part of speech. Once a kid knows that “un-” reverses meaning and “-tion” turns a verb into a noun, they can start decoding words they’ve never seen before. That’s the whole point.

Then it gets really interesting. Weeks 5 and 6 tackle Latin and Greek roots — 20 Latin roots like “struct,” “dict,” and “port,” plus 10 Greek roots like “graph,” “phon,” and “bio” that dominate science and math vocabulary. Here’s why this matters: Latin and Greek roots account for over 60% of academic English. A child who knows these roots doesn’t just read better — they understand better.

Week 7 pulls everything together with intensive application practice, decoding grade-level and above-grade-level words in context. Week 8 extends that into real academic content — science, social studies, and math texts where these skills actually get used. And Week 9 is a cumulative assessment covering the entire system.

Each week includes 5 practice worksheets with full answer keys. The progression is deliberate. By the end of nine weeks, your child won’t just be sounding out long words — they’ll be taking them apart with confidence, understanding the meaning of each piece, and putting it all back together. That’s what classical phonics instruction looks like when it’s done right.