What Is Morphology and How Do I Teach It?

Hey, there Happy Monday. I am so glad you are tuning in today. So today we are going to talk about one of my favorite topics and that is morphology. And we’re gonna talk about what is morphology? And how do I teach it?

Now, there’s probably many of you who are like, oh, yeah, I love morphology. And then there might be some of you that are like, Okay, what exactly is morphology? And I feel like maybe two or three years ago, had you asked me what morphology is and why is it important to the upper elementary classroom, I would have not been able to answer that question because I was uncertain of what this term meant.

Now it turns out and as I explained this episode, more than likely you are teaching aspects of morphology. But that term morphology might be something that you’re like, Okay, I’ve heard it, but I’m not exactly sure what it is. Turns out though, morphology is very important for upper elementary students, which is why we’re going to talk about it today.

So let’s just start by getting on the same page with what is morphology. And morphology really is the study of words. Specifically, it is the study of word meaning. And it’s really all about how can we combine smaller word parts that contain meaning to form new words. Morphology is really the study of morphemes. And a morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning that a word has.

You know, if we think about it, words are combined by the word parts that contain meaning. And that’s how we form these larger words. So, all morphemes contain meaning. And there are two different types of morphemes. There is a free morpheme and that is a morpheme that can stand on its own as a word. For example, the word happy is a free morpheme that is a word on its own, we cannot break happy down any further as far as meaning goes, and it can stand by itself. So that is a free morpheme.

Then we have bound morphemes and bound morphemes must be attached to another word part. You know, they still contain meaning but in order for them to be a complete word they must be attached. So an example of this would be the prefix un, U N is an example of a bound morpheme. Un by itself is not a word, it has to be attached to other words, but un still has meaning. We know that when we see un attached to words, it means not or opposite of. So when you combined the free morpheme happy with the bound morpheme un, you get unhappy.

So this is important for students to know, because when we have a strong understanding of morphemes, it can help us understand the meaning of words like unhappy or other words that we encounter. So morpheme is really a unit of meaning. And morphology is the study of these morphemes.

And like I said, you know, one of our big goals in upper elementary is to really help our students create morphological awareness, which simply means that we want our students to be aware of morphemes, we want them to understand morphemes, we want them to really think about the word parts that they encounter.

And you guys have heard me talk about Wiley Blevins before and I’ve talked about this quote before but it is one of my favorites and it applies to the podcast topic today. So it bears bringing it up again.

But Wiley Blevins has one of my all time favorite quotes, and he says, We want to create an environment where our students are word watchers. And that does not happen unless we intentionally create an environment that focuses on words.

And I really just love this idea that in our classrooms, we want to create word watchers. We want to create students who notice and pay attention to words and I love that the reminder that that does not happen right? Students aren’t going to pay attention to words unless we are creating an environment that intentionally focuses on words, which is why we need to teach morphology, because when we do, we are helping our students create that word awareness.

So before we jump in and really talk about how to teach morphology, let’s talk a little bit about really some of the benefits of why this is something that is so important in our classroom.

So first of all, it is a really effective word learning tool. And I think it’s important for us to recognize, you know, we’ve talked about explicit vocabulary instruction before. But the reality of it is, is we cannot teach our students every single unknown word they will encounter, we just don’t have the time.

You know, I read somewhere that students are going to encounter or they will read anywhere from 1 million to 2 million words during like their school year, and up to 30,000 of those could be unknown. That’s a lot of words, we just don’t have time to teach all of those words. So we need to teach our students word learning tools that will help them figure out how to pronounce words how to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words. And morphology is one of those tools that we can teach our students.

It is estimated that over 60%, of English words have meanings that can be predicted from their word parts. You know, so when we invest our instructional time and teaching things like Greek and Latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes, which are all examples of morphemes, then we are giving our students tools that are going to help them figure out the meaning of the majority of the words they read. So morphology is a very effective way to help our students expand their vocabulary.

But it also helps students improve their word recognition. And word recognition is essential if we want our students to become independent and skilled readers. You know, comprehension obviously, is a big focus and upper elementary, but the reality is, is that students are going to have no hope of comprehending a text on their own, if they can’t actually read the words.

And I think this becomes an even bigger challenge in upper elementary, because really, starting in third grade, students start to encounter so many more multisyllabic words. I don’t know if you’ve experienced this if you’re an upper elementary teacher, but many students can be fluent, or proficient readers in the primary grades, you know, they they read fine up until second grade, but then when they come to third grade, they start to struggle.

And you know, and maybe you’re like, Okay, let me go back and do some research. And you ask the, you know, kindergarten, first and second grade teachers about a particular student, and they’re like, no, they read fine, they read great. I think, you know, students who are able to read single syllable words, or even two syllable words, you know, they might be fine in that capacity. But once they start to encounter more multisyllabic words, it is a struggle.

And so recognizing that, especially like I said, in third grade, students start to see more multisyllabic words, we want to give them support, so that they can tackle big words. And when students study roots, and prefixes and suffixes, again, all of those morphemes, they start to become familiar with word parts.

And so even though morphology really focuses a lot on meaning, students can recognize word chunks, you know, they recognize the suffix nests, and it’s gonna make it easier for them to read words with that suffix in it. Or they might recognize the suffix ion, tion, sion, all of those. And again, it’s going to help them read words that have that specific word part in it.

So when students focus on morphology, it gives them tools that will also help their word recognition and word reading of multisyllabic words.

And then, of course, morphology, enhances comprehension, which is our big goal. You know, in order for students to be able to comprehend a text, they need to have familiarity with 90 to 95% of the words in the text. So that’s a lot. So if there are just a handful, you know, two or three words, in a text that students don’t understand. It has the ability to impact their comprehension of it.

And since we can’t possibly teach students every single word they will encounter, we want to make sure our students have the tools that really builds their awareness. So even if they have not explicitly been taught individual words, they can look at the word parts, they can break a word down into its morphemes and figure out the meaning of it. So all of those benefits are reasons why we really want to focus on morphology in our classrooms.

And like I said, more than likely, at some point you probably have taught prefixes, suffixes or roots to students. It is I think, on pretty much every state standard. But what we want to do is we want to make sure that we are teaching morphology in an effective way that really allows us to create this classroom environment where our students can become word watchers.

So I’ve got three steps that you can do to effectively teach morphology. The first step is to systematically and explicitly teach morphemes to your students. And I’m sure you’ve probably heard those terms systematic and explicit instruction, those come up a lot when we’re talking about the science of reading. But sometimes it’s like, okay, well, what exactly does that mean? What does it mean it for teaching systematically or explicitly?

So I’m going to break those down for you. Systematically refers to the order in which we’re teaching the concepts. So we really want to teach our word study lessons in an order that makes sense. So when we’re teaching our students in, you know, again, when we’re thinking upper elementary, and assuming students are coming to us with some previous word knowledge, you know, they’ve got strong spelling patterns, and phonics, knowledge and things like that.

What we want to do is we want to teach morphemes in an order from like, least complex to most complex. And so we start with the most basic and simple concepts. And so maybe you start by introducing and teaching, the idea of compound words. You know, compound words are two morphemes, really two free morphemes that can be attached to form a single word.

So we’d start with compound words, then we might move into prefixes, then we’d introduce suffixes, and then maybe we would show students words that have both prefixes and suffixes, and then we’d introduce roots. So again, the idea of teaching systematically really means that we start with the easier concepts and work our way up to the more complex concepts. So that’s what systematic is.

So explicit, then, really refers to how you teach your lessons. And explicit really means that we are providing clear, detailed and effective instruction. So I’m going to give you kind of an overview of what it could look like to explicitly teach a morpheme to your students.

Keep in mind that when you’re providing explicit instruction, you can do that whole group or small group, I think when we’re introducing and teaching morphemes, the majority of our students are going to benefit from that. So we would want to teach these whole group but you can also provide explicit instruction about morphology and morphemes, to your students in small groups.

So you can sort of follow this pattern or framework with any morpheme. The first thing that you want to do is make sure that you are introducing morphemes, one at a time, and you’re giving students a student friendly definition. And I think this is a mistake that I made when I was in a classroom. You know, I would introduce the idea of prefixes and then I would give my students a list of like, you know, 20 different prefixes, and I was like, here you go, go figure it out.

But what we really want to do is dig deep into a single prefix, suffix, or root. So our students have all of the word knowledge that they need, in order to really understand it, use it, apply it. So introduce prefixes, suffixes, or roots one at a time, with a student friendly definition. So that would look like maybe saying the prefix un means not or opposite of.

You know, giving them a poster, an anchor chart, you know, some visual, I think it can be really helpful to include a visual aid, whether it’s an icon, a picture, or a symbol that really just helps them connect the meaning of the morpheme to the definition.

You also then want to show your students really concrete examples of words that have that morpheme. And again, use kid friendly definitions, and really help them understand how we’re combining the morphemes to create this new word with meanings. So maybe you’d give them examples of unhappy means not happy, unrelated means not related, unable means not able. You know, so again, they’re seeing how we’re combining the morphemes to form this new word. And we can break it down and use each morpheme to figure out the meaning of the new word.

Then you want to think about if there’s any additional information that your students might need to know about this specific morpheme. And this might apply more to like roots and suffixes. So for example, if you’re teaching roots, you’d want students to know if it’s like a Greek root or a Latin root.

If you’re teaching suffixes, you would want students to know the difference between an inflectional suffix and a derivational suffix. In that case, an inflectional suffix does not change the part of speech when you attach the suffix to a word. But a derivational suffix will change the part of speech, you know that information can be really helpful for students.

You also want to give students any insights into spelling patterns. And again, this usually doesn’t happen when you’re teaching prefixes. Most of the time when you’re adding a prefix, the base word or the root you’re adding it to isn’t going to change the spelling.

But when we add suffixes to words, a lot of times the spelling pattern changes. So for example, if you’re adding the suffix ness to a word that ends in a y like happy you need to drop the y add an i and then the suffix. So again, when you’re teaching suffixes think about do students need to have any knowledge about spelling with this specific type of suffix? So sharing any extra information that is needed.

You also want to think about, can you show your students non examples? We refer to them as like imposter prefixes or suffixes. And again, usually this is going to show up or be an easier for students to see in prefixes.

So for example, if you’re teaching your students that the letters un, make the prefix un and that means not or opposite of, you know, students might be just looking for the word U N, in any word not recognizing that there are some words like Uncle that begin with a U N, but in that case, they don’t serve as the prefix meaning not or opposite of.

So making sure students are aware of the non examples or the imposter prefixes. Then you want to give your students an opportunity to really practice creating words that have this prefix, suffix or root. So again, students recognize you know, it’s like we can attach prefixes and suffixes to a lot of words, but we can’t necessarily add them to every word.

So have students just practice exploring what is it like to build words with these morphemes? And how does the morpheme change the meaning and the spelling of the word. And then of course, anytime we’re introducing word parts or words to students, we want to give them examples in context.

So we either want to show them sentences that have that word or paragraphs that have multiple words. So that way, students can see it in context. You know, I think anytime we’re teaching word study, we want to remember that the end goal is not for students to know a bunch of words, it’s for them to understand those words in context. So from the very beginning, we want to give our students context for the word.

So introduce the morpheme, give a student friendly definition, model using examples, give more information, show non examples, if applicable, practice building words, and then give examples of words and context. So those steps you can follow for any morpheme that you are introducing to your students. So that is step number one to explicitly teach morphemes to your students.

The second thing you want to do is give your students opportunities to really explore and play with words. And you know, explicit instruction is important. But we really don’t want our students to have just one single touch point with a morpheme. And then that’s it. You know, really, in order for our students to internalize the morpheme, and their understanding of it, they need to have multiple opportunities to see it, explore it, and use it.

And we can do that in a variety of ways. And we can also make this part really fun for our students. I think, this step right here, it can be where students really kind of like fall in love with words and, and see how cool words can be.

So examples of some things that you could do are have students build words. So you could give students word parts, you know, cards that have prefixes, suffixes, and base words, and have them practice building words. You can have students do word sorts. So again, you could give students that have a bunch of words that have morphemes and they have to sort them.

They could look for, you know, words that have prefixes that may not or opposite of, they could find all words with derivational suffixes, they could look for all words with the root auto, there’s all sorts of ways that you can have students sort words. So that’s another fun way.

Another fun activity is to use a word ladder. And a word ladder is simply an activity where students start with a word and then you give them a clue or a prompt that has them change a part of the word to form a new word.

So for example, a word ladder could be start with the word view, add a prefix that means before, so now they have the word preview, then you would say, okay, add a suffix that indicates present tense. So now they have previewing. So then you would say change the prefix to one that means to do again, so now they have reviewing. Okay, then we would say change the base word to read or given another definition, you know, and now they have rereading. So again, having them just manipulate a word and add to it or subtract to it to form a new word. Those are word ladders.

Another thing that you could do is have students create word webs. So give them a single morpheme that they can put in the center and then have them come up with all of the words they know that are connected to that specific morpheme. So all of these are activities that are really going to help your students to solidify their understanding of the morphemes that you are working with. So this is definitely an important step that we want to be intentional about including in our classroom.

And then the third and final thing that you want to do when thinking about about teaching morphology is to really help students transfer their morphological awareness to the texts that they are reading. And again, this step is really important because we don’t want our instruction to stop with, you know, here’s the morpheme, and the definition of it, and you can build some words.

Ultimately, what we want students to do is when they are reading, and they see a word that has a morpheme that they’re aware of, we want them to pause and be like, Okay, I know the meaning of this word, I know how to spell this word, I know how to pronounce this word, because I know the morphemes in the word. So we want them to be really aware of morphemes in the text that they’re reading.

And so this is really done by, you know, anytime that you have a reading experience with your students, that you become aware of opportunities to focus on morphology. So while you’re reading, if you come across a word that has morphemes in it, and most words do so if you see words that have prefixes, suffixes or roots, you know, pause, spend some time on that word, break it apart with your students, show them, you know, the morphemes, and how that can help us figure out the meaning.

And you don’t have to do it for every word, but it’s something that we want to model to our students regularly so they know to do this in their own reading. You know, thinking about when you’re teaching small group lessons, one thing you can do, and I mean, you could do this in whole group as well, but it works really well in small group is teach your students a strategy for how to read big words.

And we have a free poster at stellarteacher.com/bigwords, and we call it our reading big word strategy. And it is teaching students that when they see a big multisyllabic word, they can circle the prefix, put a box around the suffix, you know, look for word parts they know in the middle of the word, and it just walks them through step by step how to read big words through the context of their morphological awareness. So that’s something that you could bring into your small group instruction.

You know, when students are reading independently, or with a partner, you could prompt them and say, Okay, today I want you to look for, you know, a word that has this morpheme in it, or this specific word part, you know, or find a word you don’t know and use the morphemes to figure it out. So again, prompting them with students are reading to pay attention to the words.

You know, you can even think about your classroom environment, and how does your classroom environment highlight morphemes. You know, you could display morpheme posters around your classroom, if you have a word wall, where you have the word cards, you could have the morphemes circled, so you could circle or box prefixes, suffixes, or roots. So those really stand out to your students.

So even in your classroom environment, you can think about how am I creating and supporting morphological awareness. And ultimately, what we want is we want a classroom environment to be one in which students notice words and think about words.

And my husband often makes fun of me, or teases me, because you know, as we’re either driving along, and I see a billboard, or if I’m reading something, or whatever, I sort of to myself, well be like, Oh, that word has so many syllables in it, or, you know, that word has, you know, this root, or I start thinking of like related words to it, I’m kind of just constantly paying attention to words, and I have this like, internal dialogue going on.

I think it’s probably because I’m doing so much learning myself and research and creating resources and doing podcasts that talk about this, you know, but he kind of thinks I’m a little bit crazy when I’m like, oh, that word has, you know, so many syllables in it, or, Oh, this is the morpheme, or oh, that’s an inflectional suffix, whatever.

But honestly, this is the type of behavior that we want from our students. You know, we want our students to have this internal dialogue, where they are simply constantly thinking about words. They’re considering pronunciation, they’re thinking about spelling, they’re thinking about the meaning. The more our students think about words, the more they’re going to begin to understand them, which is ultimately going to directly impact their ability to improve their overall reading comprehension and enjoyment.

So just to recap, the three things that you can do to increase your student’s morphological awareness and will help you create word watchers in your classroom. You can one, explicitly teach morphemes to your students. And remember, I shared some steps on how to do that.

Two give your students opportunities to explore and play with morphemes make it fun, incorporate some of those fun activities and games I shared. And then the final thing is help your students transfer their morphological awareness to the texts they’re reading. And you can do that by modeling by prompting them by making sure that you are talking about morphemes outside of your word study lessons.

So I hope this episode really helps you feel just more excited and confident in your ability to tackle morphology this next year. I hope you have a stellar week and I will see you back here next Monday.