What is Morphology?

Gaining Morphological Awareness: Activities for Teachers

Students build their academic vocabulary when they understand where words come from and how they are formed. By studying word parts like prefixes, suffixes, and Latin or Greek roots, they can better decode unfamiliar words and gain a deeper understanding of language in different subjects. 

Teachers can use a Structured Literacy approach based on the science of reading to expose their students to an essential piece of the literacy pie: Morphology. The International Dyslexia Association® (IDA) states that Structured Literacy should cover phonemic awareness, sound-symbol correspondences, orthography, morphology, semantics, and syntax. By helping students develop morphological awareness, or the understanding of how words are broken into smaller units of meaning, you can ensure your students become successful readers.

What is Morphology?

Morphology is the study of morphemes, which are the meaningful units of words such as prefixes, roots, suffixes, and combining forms. Morphology refers to the structure and meaning of those words, focusing on their individual components. These components include: 

• Prefixes are added at the beginning of a word 

• Suffixes are added at the end of a word 

• Latin roots provide the core meaning of a word 

• Greek combining forms offer additional depth to vocabulary

Students who understand each word part are better equipped to decode and understand what they’re reading.

What Is Morphological Awareness?

According to the IDA, morphological awareness is explicitly thinking about the smallest units of meaning in language, called morphemes. These include standalone words, prefixes, suffixes, and bound roots, which are roots that must have a prefix or suffix added to become a word. For example:

Morphology also examines word structure—how words join together. An example of two words joining together to make another word is “notebook.” It combines “note” (a short piece of writing) and “book” (a set of written or printed pages) to form a new word meaning a book for writing notes. 

Studies show morphological awareness contributes to word reading and comprehension skills. A 2010 meta-analysis focused on students in grades pre–K–8 found that, on average, morphology instruction interventions positively affected word reading, spelling, and vocabulary knowledge compared to usual classroom instruction. Students who have a strong understanding of morphemes have an easier time spelling and determining the meaning of new words. For example, in the word “cats,” a basic analysis would show there are four phonemes: /k/, /a/, /t/, and /s/. However, the word only has two morphemes (meaningful word parts): “Cat” is a feline animal, and “s” tells us that there is more than one cat. 

Morphology and the Science of Reading

The science of reading is a body of research representing decades of gold-standard study demonstrating the science behind how the human brain learns to read. Structured Literacy is the in-class application of the science of reading. The IDA highlights two critical hallmarks of Structured Literacy instruction:

• It must teach all of the components that evidence has found to be foremost in ensuring reading success

• It must employ principles that align with the necessity of each component

Teachers can better understand the application of the science of reading through these interconnected frameworks and models. Each approach includes components and concepts to help us understand how students learn to read. 

• The Five Pillars of Reading Instruction: The Five Pillars of Reading Instruction, also known as The Five Pillars of Early Literacy, are a set of key components developed by the National Reading Panel that are essential for reading proficiency. These pillars include: 

  • Phonemic awareness

  • Phonics

  • Vocabulary

  • Fluency

  • Comprehension

• Scarborough’s Reading Rope: With a slightly different skill component breakdown, Scarborough’s Reading Rope offers a visual of the different components that must be woven together to foster skilled reading. These strands are separated into two categories: Word recognition and language comprehension. 

  • The word-recognition strands include phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition of familiar words. 

  • The language-comprehension strands include background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge. Each reinforces the other to produce a skilled reader. 

Scarborough’s “Rope” Model from Handbook of Early Literacy Research, © 2001 by Guilford Press.

• The Simple View of Reading: According to Philip Gough and William Tunmer’s (1986) Simple View of Reading (SVR), reading comprehension is conceptualized through the combination of two skills: Word recognition and language comprehension. The model is a multiplication equation, highlighting that both concepts are necessary—missing one can result in reading failure. Morphology is specifically called out as a critical piece of the word recognition strand, along with phonology, the sound system of a language, including how sounds are organized and used; and orthography, the written system of a language, including spelling patterns and letter-sound correspondences.

Why Is Morphology Important in the Classroom?

Teaching students to identify and understand the meanings of prefixes, suffixes, and root words are examples of morphology instruction. Advocates of morphology instruction argue that direct morphology instruction can particularly help students who struggle to decode multisyllabic words and that it can support deeper and richer vocabulary development as reading becomes more academic and specific to particular subjects. 

When students start learning to read, most of the words they see are simple. They can use their decoding skills to read short, easy words. However, students quickly stumble upon common word prefixes or suffixes. Researcher Kathleen Raslte said in a recent EdWeek article that students must understand the meaning of these word parts to understand how they change the meanings of root words. As students are exposed to more complex texts, they need the skills to decode and understand multisyllabic words made up of several parts. 

• In a study of 1,200 books for children ages 7 and older, Rastle and her team found that most of the 100,000 words they analyzed were made up of multiple meaningful parts, or morphemes. Students often learn these patterns naturally by seeing the same word parts in different words, but this process takes time and a lot of reading.

• Other studies suggest explicitly teaching students word structure can improve their reading skills. For example, this approach can benefit Emergent Bilinguals because it helps them see connections between English and their native language.

Why Do Parents and Teachers Need To Know About Morphological Awareness?

When experienced learners read or write, they usually don’t consider the morphemes that make up a word because they’ve memorized what those words mean and how the attached prefixes and suffixes change their meanings. However, by helping students develop morphological awareness, teachers can help students decode and spell words they might be unfamiliar with.

• For example, a student may encounter a word they have never seen before in a text, such as ‘unforgiving.’ If she knows the meaning of the prefix un- (not or opposite of), the meaning of the root word forgive, and the meaning of the suffix –ing (continuous action), she can put those meanings together to get an idea of the whole word’s meaning opposite of forgiving. This is an example of a student using morphological awareness to read a word correctly. 

• Or, a student might have difficulty remembering how to spell the past tense suffix in a word such as jumped, because the last sound in that word sounds like a /t/ sound. Once the student understands that ‘ed’  is the suffix that changes a root word to past tense, they can spell the word jumped correctly. This is an example of a student using morphological awareness to spell a word correctly. 

In textbooks, most vocabulary words students must learn to succeed academically are unfamiliar words composed of multiple morphemes. If students develop strong morphological awareness skills early, they can problem-solve the meanings of these words by considering each of the individual morphemes and “blending” those meanings together to determine the word’s meaning (Anglin, 1993; Kruk & Bergman, 2013; Pacheco & Goodwin, 2013). 

Signs Students May Need Support With Morphological Awareness

Students with weak morphological awareness might show deficits in reading, writing, and language skills. Here are some key indicators teachers and parents should look for:

• Difficulty with word recognition: Students may struggle to recognize and read multisyllabic words. They also might have difficulty breaking down longer words into parts, making reading more challenging and time-consuming.

• Comprehension issues: Students may not understand the meaning of unfamiliar words in context, even if they can decode them phonetically.

• Slow reading speed: Students have difficulty processing words with multiple morphemes, causing them to read more slowly.

• Inconsistent spelling: Students may not spell words consistently, especially when adding prefixes or suffixes to base words, such as changing “tidy” to “tidied.”

• Limited vocabulary use: Students may avoid using multisyllabic words in written work because they are uncertain how to form and spell words.

• Challenges with academic language: Students may have challenges understanding academic vocabulary, which often includes words with multiple morphemes.

• Overreliance on context: Students may over rely on context clues to understand complex words.

By recognizing these signs early, you can provide targeted interventions to develop students' morphological awareness.

Morphology Activities for Teachers

To make morphology instruction fun, there are several ways to engage students in activities that emphasize word parts. 

Here’s an example of a morphology activity that focuses on adding suffixes to change verb tenses:

Materials:

• Word cards with verbs in their base form and past-tense form (e.g., jump/jumped, stop/stopped, cry/cried, run/ran).

• Three column headers: "-ed," "-d," "Irregular"

Activity Steps:

1. Introduce the Task:
   Tell students they will be sorting words into groups based on patterns they notice in how past-tense verbs are formed.

2. Sort the Words:
   Distribute a mix of base verbs and their past-tense forms. Ask students to work in pairs or small groups to sort them into three categories based on the past-tense ending:

   • Verbs that add “-ed” (e.g., jump → jumped)

   • Verbs that add “-d” (e.g., live → lived)

   • Irregular verbs that don’t follow these patterns (e.g., run → ran)

3. Discuss Patterns:
   Guide students in analyzing the sorted words. Encourage them to articulate the rules:

   • Regular verbs typically add “-ed” to form the past tense.

   • If the base verb ends in e, only “-d” is added.

   • Some verbs do not follow these patterns and are irregular (e.g., go → went).

4. Extend Learning:
   Challenge students to generate additional examples for each category, reinforcing their understanding of morphological rules.

Other activities include:

• Make visual links: Morphological word parts can be abstract, making it challenging for students to remember them. One effective strategy is to establish visual links by associating these parts with images. Lexia® Core5® Reading and Lexia® PowerUp Literacy® each include simple picture-matching exercises, enabling students to create lasting visual connections that support the retention of this word knowledge.

• Break down/put together words: Encourage students to break down words they read, analyze the meaning of word families, and compare words with similar components. You could also lead a word sort activity that asks students to sort individual words into separate columns based on particular commonalities to determine if they follow a specific pattern or rule. Once students figure out the rule, you can encourage them to search for words in their texts that follow the rule and/or spelling words that follow the rule. Both Core5 and PowerUp provide students with opportunities to identify, categorize, and compare word parts, reinforcing their morphology awareness. 

• Use new word parts in multiple contexts: Ask students to point out the morphemes they discover in different subject areas to promote a holistic understanding of language. Core5 lets students apply their knowledge by asking them to identify morphological word parts in various sentences, while PowerUp challenges students to identify newly acquired word parts in passages of academic text.

• Explore borrowed words and loanwords: Languages often borrow words from other languages, resulting in what are called “loanwords.” By asking students to search for borrowed words and their origins, they can also learn the influences and patterns of word formation across languages. Introduce loanwords from various languages and discuss their meanings and etymology. This approach strengthens morphological and cultural awareness. 

Additional Resources for Teaching Morphology

Adolescents are expected to have made the leap from learning to read to reading to learn. However, for decades, assessments such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) continue to illuminate opportunity gaps, revealing that about one-third of eighth grade students read at or above the proficient level. 

To help teachers accelerate reading in students in grades 4–9, the Institute of Education Sciences published a practice guide that includes morphology activities. The guide recommends building students’ decoding skills and word knowledge so they can read and make sense of text. The document provides activities for segmenting words into prefixes, suffixes, and bases and includes a list of frequently occurring prefixes and suffixes in academic language.

Lexia’s solutions can also help you reinforce morphology in grades pre-K–12 through structured, systematic, and explicit instruction programs that help students understand how morphemes contribute to word meaning. Here’s how Lexia® incorporates morphology across its programs:

• Explicitly teaches common morphemes, including Greek and Latin roots, through scaffolded lessons

• Introduces morphemes in a logical sequence, ensuring students build on prior knowledge

• Allows students to manipulate morphemes to form new words and understand word structure

• Includes strategies like recognizing affixes and understanding how morphemes affect word meaning

• Assesses students’ progress and adapts instruction based on their needs

• Provides real-time data and targeted intervention materials to help you reinforce morphology skills as needed

Learn how you can incorporate morphology activities to make literacy instruction engaging and effective for diverse learners.