Dr. Marcia Henry contributed the following post. Marcia is known for morphology research and her work with the International Dyslexia Association. Useful publications for teachers of reading and spelling include WORDS and Unlocking Literacy.
Thanks, Susan, for inviting me to participate in Vocabulogic. I’d like to introduce a framework for teaching morphemes that has been useful for me. Morphemes are the smallest unit of meaning in English words. They are the base words in compound words, the prefixes and suffixes, the Latin roots and the Greek combining forms (often called roots).
Click each slide to enlarge. Right click to save to desktop. When I began my doctoral program, I had taught Orton-Gillingham for over 20 years. Yet, I had no idea how etymology and word origin influence the form of polysyllabic words. When I tried to describe my dissertation idea, my mentor and professor at Stanford, Bob Calfee, said, “Don’t tell me, bring me your picture.” Huh? What picture? Well, two years later I had my picture of what I thought teachers should know about the English language for teaching reading to all students, especially those for whom reading acquisition is a problem. Here is the “picture.”
Teachers need to know how the three major word origins impact letter-sound correspondences, syllable patterns, and morpheme patterns. These patterns become the strategies students can use to decode and spell unfamiliar words. We’ll concentrate on morphemes in this blog as morphemes are valuable for decoding, spelling, fluency, and vocabulary, and therefore, comprehension. Notice the morpheme column in the matrix. You’ll see that Anglo-Saxon base words, those common, short, everyday words both compound and affix (i.e., add prefixes and/or suffixes). Latin based words only affix. We can’t compound two Latin roots, but must add prefixes and/or suffixes to the root word. For example building upon the root struct, we can make struct, construct, reconstruct, reconstruction, reconstructionist and reconstructionists. This can be presented in a matrix, shown below. Greek words, on the other hand, usually compound. We combine psych(o) and logy to form psychology, therm(o) and meter to form thermometer. (Those o’s serve as connectives between the two combining forms.)
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Now, how does all this relate to vocabulary? Children who understand word structure often get the meaning of words when they understand the meaning of prefixes, suffixes, and roots. Teachers can purchase or make drill cards with each of the base words and roots. Write the meaning and several examples on the back of each card. I color code the cards, making separate stacks for prefixes, suffixes, Latin roots and Greek combining forms (Henry, 2003, 2010; Henry & Redding, 2002). Students learn the meanings of each affix and root, and read and spell words, phrases, and sentences containing the word parts. Be sure to ask students to look for morphemes in context as they read content area text and literature, and to use the morphemes in their own writing. Discuss nuances of the meanings of words containing the various patterns.
NOTE: Remember that suffixes generally provide a syntactic meaning, not a semantic meaning. Suffixes are great ways to learn parts of speech as children learn that –ion, -ist and –or are noun endings; -ive, -est, and –ible are adjective endings; -ly is an adverb ending, etc.
I use the drill cards to establish automaticity as students see the now familiar word parts in words. This automaticity leads to accurate decoding and spelling, to fluency, and to vocabulary acquisition and comprehension.
Primary grade students can begin adding prefixes and suffixes to short Anglo-Saxon base words and discuss the meaning. Anglo-Saxon base words both compound and affix. For example, using the base spell we can compound to make spellbound, spellchecker, and spellbind. We can affix as in spell, misspell, respell, spelled, spelling and speller and of read, reread, preread, misread, reader, and reading. These examples require no special rules when adding suffixes, but eventually students will need to learn when to double the final consonant, drop the final e, and change y to i when adding suffixes (as in mad/madder, skate/skating, and baby/babies).
Students in upper elementary school and the secondary grades will benefit as they learn the meanings of additional affixes and common Latin roots and Greek combining forms. Knowing that spect comes from Latin 'to see, to watch' helps students understand the meaning of respect, inspect, spectator, spectacular, introspective, spectacles and retrospective. Knowing the Greek combining form graph and gram, meaning 'written or drawn' accesses words such as phonograph, autograph, biography, telegram, phonogram and histogram.
As children learn the various morphemes they will benefit from doing the word sums and matrices presented by Pete Bowers in Vocabulogic. I like to have children generate as many words as they can using a specific base or root before they they design the matrix. For example, in presenting the Latin root, rupt, children may come up with erupt, eruption, disrupt, disruptive, rupture, bankrupt, irrupt, etc. Students can make words sums and then a matrix. They could also create a wordweb, as shown below.
NOTE: Remember that suffixes generally provide a syntactic meaning, not a semantic meaning. Suffixes are great ways to learn parts of speech as children learn that –ion, -ist and –or are noun endings; -ive, -est, and –ible are adjective endings; -ly is an adverb ending, etc.
I use the drill cards to establish automaticity as students see the now familiar word parts in words. This automaticity leads to accurate decoding and spelling, to fluency, and to vocabulary acquisition and comprehension.
Primary grade students can begin adding prefixes and suffixes to short Anglo-Saxon base words and discuss the meaning. Anglo-Saxon base words both compound and affix. For example, using the base spell we can compound to make spellbound, spellchecker, and spellbind. We can affix as in spell, misspell, respell, spelled, spelling and speller and of read, reread, preread, misread, reader, and reading. These examples require no special rules when adding suffixes, but eventually students will need to learn when to double the final consonant, drop the final e, and change y to i when adding suffixes (as in mad/madder, skate/skating, and baby/babies).
Students in upper elementary school and the secondary grades will benefit as they learn the meanings of additional affixes and common Latin roots and Greek combining forms. Knowing that spect comes from Latin 'to see, to watch' helps students understand the meaning of respect, inspect, spectator, spectacular, introspective, spectacles and retrospective. Knowing the Greek combining form graph and gram, meaning 'written or drawn' accesses words such as phonograph, autograph, biography, telegram, phonogram and histogram.
As children learn the various morphemes they will benefit from doing the word sums and matrices presented by Pete Bowers in Vocabulogic. I like to have children generate as many words as they can using a specific base or root before they they design the matrix. For example, in presenting the Latin root, rupt, children may come up with erupt, eruption, disrupt, disruptive, rupture, bankrupt, irrupt, etc. Students can make words sums and then a matrix. They could also create a wordweb, as shown below.
To paraphrase Pete Bowers' response to your questions of 1/04/2010, teachers can use the word sums and matrices with any program they currently find useful in their practice. And, I must say, students love to play with morphemes. They also enjoy generating words and making wordwebs.
Providing multiple opportunities to work with these morphemes in context will have lasting benefit for students. (See Ebbers & Denton, 2008 for the Outside-In Strategy for carrying out morphemic analysis in context.)
I am happy to respond to comments and questions!
~Marcia
References
- Ebbers, S.M., & Denton, C.A. (2008). A root awakening: Vocabulary instruction for older students with reading difficulties. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 23(2), 90-102.
- Henry, M.K. (2003). Unlocking literacy: Effective decoding and spelling instruction. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.
- Henry, M.K. (2010). WORDS: Integrated decoding and spelling instruction based on word origin and word structure (2nd ed.). Austin, TX: PRO-ED.
- Henry, M.K., & Redding, N.C. (2002). Patterns for success in reading and spelling. Austin, TX: PRO-ED.