All about how to teach morphology (meaningful word parts) to help students more efficiently read, write, and comprehend the English language.
There are so many morphemes in our morphophonemic language that any one you choose to teach can feel like a drop in the ocean of what your student needs to know. But to help your students make morphology and vocabulary growth, you have to start somewhere! But morphemes do make a huge difference, especially when…
As I was growing up, I learned to spell through rote memorization. I’d picture the word in my head, spell it out loud, copy it over and over. You remember how spelling was done. I became a pretty good speller, thanks to a pretty good visual memory. And yet certain errors plagued me. Does attendance…
It’s usually pretty easy to convince teachers of advanced students to teach Latin and Greek roots. These languages form the foundation of lots of our math and science vocabulary in English, so it makes sense for students studying advanced topics to study this foundational content. But high achieving students aren’t the only ones who need…
Word sums in morphology lessons are a way to visually represent the morphemes in a word. Just like the numbers in a math sum, these parts add up to the meaning of the whole word. For example, in distracted: dis + tract + ed dis means away, apart or not tract means to pull -ed…
A few years ago, a big buzzword in structured literacy instruction was “advanced phonemic awareness.” We had kids doing long exercises where they verbally changed one word to another, sound by sound. But more recent data (Brady 2020) shows that the core phonemic awareness skills (segmenting and blending individual phonemes in words) are what really…
Just like a classroom word wall helps students recall spelling patterns and sight words, a morpheme wall can anchor vocabulary growth by connecting meaning and spelling. A well-designed root word bulletin board (or morpheme anchor chart) becomes a living, visual reminder that words are built from meaningful parts. It gives students a quick reference when…
Like many things worth learning, morphology takes time and repeated practice. That’s why my structured literacy lessons frequently include morphology games for middle school students. There is a time and a place in my structured literacy lessons where I tell students facts. I sometimes even say “write this down” and have them record specific notes…
You’ve taught the letter-sound correspondences. You’ve progress monitored for fluency. You taught syllable types. And you’re wondering, “Why are my students still guessing at big words?” Of all the components of structured literacy, morphology is the most often overlooked. The answer is: Because English is a morphophonemic language. Your students don’t understand the full picture,…