It started with a happy accident. I had finished a lesson with my Year 8s and, surprisingly, we had powered through the material with 15 minutes to spare. My plan for the next lesson was to introduce Fertilisers and Pesticides by looking at the etymology of the words. I thought, “Why not? Let’s lean into this now.”
I started with fertiliser. We split it into fertilise and the suffix -er. The pupils quickly deduced that fertilise meant “to produce,” but they stumbled on the suffix. I pivoted to an analogy: “To bake is a verb. A person who bakes is a…?” “A baker!” they shouted. “And what kind of word is baker?” “A noun!” “So, what does the suffix -er do?” “It turns the word into a noun!”
Wonderful. Now, pesticide.
I explained that pest refers to something troublesome, but I left -cide to them. I asked for other words ending in that suffix. One student raised their hand: “Suicide.”
I paused the class to ensure we treated the word with the necessary maturity and respect, explaining that sui is Latin for “oneself.” I then asked them to write on their mini-whiteboards what they thought -cide meant. Every single student wrote: to kill.
I asked them to define pesticide. Every single student wrote: to kill pests.
It was working. So, I pushed my luck. I threw out infanticide, matricide, spermicide. Then, I dropped the big one: regicide.
Immediately, a hand shot up. “Killing the king.”
The whole room looked at him, including me, until I remembered he was a fluent Romanian speaker. When I asked him the Romanian word for king, he grinned: “Rege.”
Now, would it have been quicker to just give them the definitions? Yes and in most circumstances, I am the biggest advocate for efficient direct instruction, also known as, just bloody telling them. But my Year 8s thrive on feeling clever and I wanted them to flex.
This wasn’t a one-off. A few months prior, I was teaching the structure of the ear to this same class (then Year 7). Now, I refuse to dumb down language for 11-year-olds because new words are new words, regardless of how complex they are. So I bypassed “hammer, anvil, and stirrup” and went straight for the Latin: Incus (anvil), Stapes (stirrup), and Malleus (hammer).
As I explained that malleus means hammer, a hand went up. “Sir… is that why a malleable metal means it can be hammered’?”
I just stared at him. He had spontaneously connected a property we studied months ago to a biological structure we were labelling today. I was completely stunned by how quick he was able to do it.
Recently, during a lesson observation by a Senior Leader, I decided to let the students show off. I went full Latin mode on the structure of a leaf to see how many links we could forge.
“Chloroplasts contain a green pigment called chlorophyll,” I explained. “Chloro- means green, and -phyll means leaf. Thinking back to the periodic table, tell me about chlorine.”
Blank faces.
“Look at the periodic table on the wall.”
Student A: “Chlorine is a green gas!” “Amazing. Now, if -phyll means leaf, based on what we have just done, what else can you tell me?” Student B: “Mesophyll?” “Yes! Meso means middle, because it’s in the middle of the leaf.” Student C: “Does that mean Mesoamerica is the middle of America?” Student A: “Is the Mesozoic era the middle era?”
At this point, if it wasn’t for a specific anthropology module in my degree, I would have been completely stumped.
“Well, kind of,” I said, sweating slightly. “Zoic means life.” Student A (again): “OMG like a ZOO!!”
Again, with my current Year 7s, I was teaching scientific equipment and we had an external visitor come into the lesson who I had known for a while. He was fluent in French, Spanish and German, so I had to get him involved.
“Sir, what is three in Spanish and French”
“Trois and tres”
“Thanks. Again sir, what is foot in French?”
“Pied”
“Now, Year 7, on your mini whiteboards, what do you think tripod means?”
Every single pupil wrote three feet. Exactly what I wanted.
When I mention etymology in science, many teachers nod and say, “Oh, like photosynthesis,” and leave it there. But if you never lean into it again, you lose the utility. For example, I bring up photosynthesis when teaching ribosomes because they already know synthesis means “to make” from protein synthesis. I just need them to retrieve it.
Etymology is not just a final fifteen minutes filler activity like I have mentioned here, it is a fundamental scaffold for understanding more complex scientific language.
When students learn the roots of language, we aren’t just helping them remember a definition, we are teaching them a tool that works across Science, History, Geography, and even MFL. We are empowering them to walk into any lesson, see a daunting word like regicide or mesophyll, and say with confidence:
“I know what that means.”
Now, I love Latin. I never learnt it in school, and I cannot even confidently speak or read it, but I find it so interesting. It is incredibly easy to identify even the most simple of root words by just googling it. Before your next topic, take 5 minutes to visit etymonline.com. Highlight 2 or 3 root words in your planning. You might be surprised by how quickly they start decoding many more words than you even planned for.
inquestion. 