Do you need your liver to live?

Do you recall a time when you were looking for something, and it was right in front of you the entire time?

 Recently, I had a family member develop an illness that impacted his liver. For over a week I read about the liver, but I never saw what was right in front of me. Do you see it?

 Last week I wrapped up the last session of a small group class where another instructor and myself had the opportunity to explore words with other brilliant word investigators--a group of dyslexic students in grades 4, 6, and 7. In less than a minute, my brilliant friends saw what had been staring at me for well over a week…the base element for <liver> is <live>! My fellow word investigators immediately saw that the spelling for <liver> is <live + er >. You may be asking, what happened to the <e> in <live>? Ah, my friends knew that is one of our suffixing rules. When adding a vowel suffix to a base or stem that ends with a final, single, non-syllabic <e>, we replace the <e> with the vowel suffix. That is how we arrive at the current spelling for the word <liver>.

 Through this brief, yet meaningful, look at the word <liver>, once again I am reminded that words are not about individual sounds. Words are made up of meaningful elements--morphemes. Sometimes we can become so busy looking at letters and sounds that we miss what is right in front of us. When exploring words through structured word inquiry (SWI), we address phonemes and graphemes (often referred to as sounds and letters), but we begin by looking at meaningful elements and then notice and discuss the phonemes and graphemes within the context of these meaningful elements. For example, why is there an <-er> and not just <r> at the end of <liver>? Ah, spellings first job is meaning, and <-er> is an agent suffix that we often see added to base elements (e.g., thinker, teacher, giver, eraser, adviser).

 Back to class…This was our last class until April, so our exploration was a bit brief. However, we explored other words that share the same base as <liver>, and we found unexpected words in the etymological family. However, and perhaps most importantly, my friends and I can’t unsee what we have seen. Every time I see the word <liver>, the first thing I see is the base <live>. So, back to my original question…can we live without our liver? No, in order to <live> we must have a <liver>!