Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in words, and learning morphemes can help students break down the meaning of unfamiliar words! This spring, we’re releasing resources to help instructors implement morphology instruction.
What Are Morphemes and Why Do They Matter?
Spelling in English can seem irregular and confusing—it's easy for students to feel lost at sea! But small word parts called morphemes can be islands of regularity, helping students tackle big words.
Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a word. Morphemes include roots (the main component of a word, such as “port” in the word “transportation”), prefixes (morphemes that attach before a root, such as “trans”), and suffixes (morphemes that attach after a root, such as “ation”).
Morphological ability—the ability to use morphemes to produce or understand written or oral language—contributes to students’ abilities to read and understand words and comprehend texts.
Morphology Resources
Word Dissector App
Using Word Dissector, educators can enter important words from a lesson, see their component morphemes and meanings, and find other words containing the same morphemes. Additionally, students can use flashcards and play games within the app to practice connecting morphemes to their meanings.
eLearning
Starting Friday, April 24, educators will be able to access a new eLearning module: Effective Morphology Instruction for Secondary Students Across Content Areas. The goal of the module is to equip educators with effective morphology instructional strategies to help students understand the meaning of unfamiliar words. The module will include a variety of resources to support learning, including interactive activities, printable resources, and videos of effective classroom implementation.
Fidelity Checklists
The Explicit Morphology Instruction Fidelity Checklists correspond with each of the morphology instructional strategies introduced in the eLearning module, helping instructional coaches and other school personnel identify key components of explicit morphology instruction and provide targeted feedback and coaching to teachers. Checklists are available in the Measure FIRST app and as printable PDFs.
Morpheme Lists
Students benefit the most from morphology instruction when it focuses on high-utility morphemes—word parts that appear frequently in academic vocabulary across content areas (i.e., English language arts, social studies, science, and math). These morpheme lists include high-utility morphemes from different content areas, their definitions, and example words containing the morphemes, so that instructors can maximize the impact of their morphology instruction.
Morpheme Cards
These morpheme cards represent high-utility morphemes that frequently appear across content areas. Each card includes the morpheme, its definition, its variants (if applicable), and the morpheme type (i.e., root, prefix, or suffix). Students can use these cards to build complex words as part of the Word Building Strategy, as introduced in the eLearning module.
PD Toolkit
This professional development toolkit is a collection of materials designed to support the training of educators in evidence-based morphology instructional practices. The toolkit will be available Friday, April 24.
Related Blog Posts
Explore the blog posts below to learn how morphology instruction can support students’ learning in English language arts and beyond!
Effective Literacy Lesson: Understanding Compound Words Through Their Two Word Parts
Teach students to read and understand a compound word by identifying the two words that make it.