The Benefits of Teaching Morphology in the Early Elementary Grades

Incorporating morphology into your literacy teaching practice may seem overwhelming—until you break it down. Morpho- means “form,” and -ology means “the study of.” Morphology, therefore, is the study of forms, specifically word forms—the smallest units of meaning in language. In my second-grade classroom, morphology is a powerful tool that yields real benefits for students, especially struggling readers, in vocabulary, comprehension, and decoding.

Here is my toolbox of strategies to incorporate more morphology into your everyday teaching practice in a very simple way. These activities can be modified for other grade levels by varying the complexity of words and texts.

Identifying Prefixes and Suffixes

Taking a few extra moments for students to find words with prefixes and suffixes in read-alouds or the texts they’re reading is a powerful way to naturally review morphology throughout the day and have students think about word meaning as they read. During a read-aloud, point out a word with a prefix or suffix and explain how it influences the word’s meaning. For example, adding -ing to a verb makes it mean that the action is happening now.

My class recently read Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden, by Christy Mandin (and absolutely loved it!), and we took some time throughout the book to notice the words on the page and find any suffixes we knew. We saw the word astonished throughout the book and noticed the -ed and how it made the verb past tense. We also noticed the word spotless, which has the suffix -less, and we talked about how adding -less to spot makes the word literally mean “without spots.” Another way to naturally embed this strategy throughout your day, with decodables or texts, is to have students highlight any morphemes they see within the text.

Word Sums

An easy way to incorporate morphology into multiple subject areas, such as English language arts (ELA) and science, is with word sum activities. In a word sum, you take a word and break it into morphemes, and then add up the meanings of the morphemes to make up the meaning of the word. For example, the word eruption has two morphemes: erupt and ion. The base word means “to explode,” and the suffix -ion, meaning “the result of,” turns verbs into nouns. Therefore, the word sum of eruption is “the result of exploding.”

Look at the vocabulary or spelling words you’re teaching this week and do a word sum activity with one or a few. I first have the students identify prefixes, then root words, then suffixes. Once we get our parts (a great time to tie in math vocabulary as well!), we then go through and identify what each part means, and then we add up all the parts and meanings to get the sum.

Dictation Activities

When doing a dictation activity, have students underline the root or base word and circle a suffix or prefix to get them thinking and recognizing the word parts (morphemes). In phonics, when my students were working on the soft c and g sounds, we practiced encoding the word canceled. I had students underline the base word (I purposely switch between using the terms base word and root word often to get my students exposed to both terms) and then circle the suffix. I had students tell me what adding the suffix -ed means and then had them tell me the definition of the whole word.

You can easily do the same activity with prefixes. For more advanced students, you can even dictate a word, have them identify the word part, and then have them complete the word sum activity in groups or by themselves to get them to connect the meaning to the parts and overall word.

Start With a Base Word

Here’s one of my favorite simple ways to incorporate morphology. Provide a specific base word and ask the kids what it would mean if a certain prefix or suffix (that they have already learned) were added to it. For example, we spent time learning about the -tion, -sion, and -ture endings, and how those suffixes turn verbs into nouns. In our ELA curriculum, we read about volcanoes, and naturally the word erupt came up. I asked the students what the word would become if we added -tion to the end. Once they successfully told me the word, I asked for the meaning and then repeated the process with other known endings, such as -ing, -ed, and -s. For older students, this activity could also include their defining the base word as well.

These strategies have helped me break down teaching morphology into manageable chunks throughout my day. Students can practice and identify morphemes in a much more authentic way when we apply these concepts in our read-alouds, reading texts, and vocabulary and spelling words. Teaching morphology, especially in K–2, doesn’t need to be intimidating. It can be easily embedded throughout your regular teaching day.