On Wednesday, October 7, 2026, attendees joined the Oakland Literacy Coalition and Celestina Lee for a Multisyllabic Words webinar.
Did you know that by 1st grade, about 50% of the words students encounter in text are multisyllabic? This insight from reading specialist Celestina Lee really stood out to attendees: “It’s really hard to start to break up a long word if you don’t know what the meaningful parts are.”
Attendees left the webinar with practical strategies to support students who feel frustrated or challenged by multisyllabic words. Celestina underscored the importance of flexing our strategies, drawing on syllable types, vowel knowledge, and morphology in different ways to help students tackle longer, more complex words. It was a powerful reminder that when we give students the tools to understand how words work, we give them more ways into the text.
Here are the resources Celestina presented: Words, Ogres and Onions Resources
Slides: Words, Ogres, & Onions
Oakland Literacy Coalition
www.oaklandliteracycoalition.org
www.literacyandjusticeforall.org
Twitter: @oaklandreads
FB: @oaklitcoalition
IG: @oaklitcoalition
