Initially, students are taught to use phonological information to read words. This works well for words such as hat and pet, which have spellings that are easily translated into sounds, but it doesn’t work as well for words, such as does or been, whose spelling-sound correspondences aren’t as direct. Morphology is called for. As Hegland (2021) advises, “Literacy instruction must explicitly show students how to analyze spoken and written words. That means it must integrate morphology from the beginning, along with the typical elements of early literacy instruction” (p. 16). Words are composed of one or more morphemes. Being aware of the underlying morphemic structures of words aids both reading and writing. For the word does, understanding that it is composed of the morphemes <do> + <es> and is related to the word do, should foster accurate spelling and reading. Likewise, understanding that been is composed of the morphemes <be> + <en> and is related to be should facilitate the accurate spelling and reading of been (Hegland, 2021).
Building Morphemic Analysis
The Power of Morphemic Awareness
Morphemic analysis has the power to accelerate students’ word knowledge with a minimum of time and effort. For instance, chances are your students know erase, pretend, and active, but might have difficulty reading the words erasure, pretension, and activate. In an extensive, classic study of the word knowledge of students in grades 4-12, the words erase, pretend, and active were known by most 4th graders, but erasure, pretension, and activate weren’t known until grade 12 (Dale & O’Rourke, 1976). Had their ability to analyze the morphemes in words been developed, chances are the students would have noted the erase in erasure, the pretend in pretension, and the act in activate long before 12th grade. In a sense, the meanings of many apparently challenging words are hiding in plain sight. Recently, I was puzzled by the word agonal that appeared in a research article I was reading, until a colleague pointed out that agon referred to agony. I had better luck with the word albumen, which appeared in the sentence: “Albumen supplies protein to the yolk.” I knew that an alb was a long white vestment worn by clergy. Using the context in which albumen appeared plus my knowledge of the word alb, I was able to deduce that albumen is the white of an egg.
The first step in developing students’ morphemic analysis ability is helping students detect the separate morphemes in words. They may not realize that a challenging word contains one or more familiar morphemes that can be used to recognize or derive the meaning of the word. A second step is structuring a systematic program for developing morphemic analysis. In study after study, students’ knowledge of morphemic elements is limited but improves significantly with instruction (Gunning, 2025).
Morphology is a vast area of study. The digital dictionary website Wordsmyth lists hundreds of bases (roots), prefixes, and suffixes. However, many appear rarely. Effective programs focus on those that would be most appropriate for students and would be most likely to help them derive the meanings of the challenging words they are facing now and will be meeting in the future. It also helps if they see the value of morphemic analysis in helping them read hard words and building their vocabularies. It helps, too, if they find the study of morphemes interesting and challenging.
Activities for Building Morphemic Analysis
Word Family Webs
One approach that has been used successfully with young children is word family webs. In a word family web, students and teacher form words by adding affixes to a base word. You would explain and show them that a word family is made up of words that have a similar meaning and spelling. Writing farm on the board, you would ask students if they can think of words that have farm in them. You would add the words that they suggest. Write the base word in black and the affix or second base word in red and stress how its meaning has been changed by the addition of an affix or second base. For instance, when adding s, you might read farms and say, “The s tells me that this word is farms. The s on the end of farms is telling me that there is more than one farm as in ‘On our class trip we visited three farms.’” Students might also form, with teacher assistance, the words: helped, helping, helpers, helpful, helpfully, helpless, helplessly. For an example of a word family created with young children, see Nueva School, https://vimeo.com/189070725.
Word Sums
One device that is used to highlight the morphemes in related words is the word sum. Word sums are created by assembling words that belong to the same family and then breaking down the words into their morphemes, which are their meaningful parts: <mor>+<pheme>+<s>. The first task is to assemble all the words that you believe belong to the word family you are investigating. Listed below are the word sums for the help family. A good source for finding the forms of a base or root is Neil and Louise Ramsden’s Word Searcher http://www.neilramsden.co.uk/spelling/. However, once you have found the listing of words or have created your own, you must determine whether the words belong to the word family you are working with. Word Searcher automatically lists all the words from its database that contain the letter sequence you entered. For the base bene, Word Searcher listed 26 matches. However, it included the word beneath. It was up to me to decide if beneath belongs to the bene word family. Since its meaning is very different from that of bene, which is defined as “well” or “good,” I judged that it was not part of the bene family. If in doubt, you can also check its etymology. The website etymonline https://www.etymonline.com/ provides the word histories for thousands of words.
Word Sums for the Help Family
help + ing helping
help + er helper
help +er + s helpers
co + help + er cohelper
co + help + er +s cohelpers
help + ful helpful
un+help+ful
help + ful + ness helpfulness
help + ful + ly helpfully
help+less helpless
help + less + helplessly
By creating words sums, students learn multiple words instead of just one. They boost their ability to use both syllabic and morphemic analysis and also learn how to analyze words. In this example, I constructed virtually all the possible word sums for help. Depending upon the age and knowledge of your students, you can limit the number and complexity of word sums.
Morphemic Mondays
Morphology is a vast area of study. The digital dictionary website Wordsmyth lists hundreds of bases (roots), prefixes, and suffixes. However, many appear rarely. Effective programs focus on those that would be most appropriate for students and would be most likely to help them derive the meanings of the challenging words they are facing now and will be meeting in the future. It also helps if they see the value of morphemic analysis in helping them read hard words and building their vocabularies. It helps, too, if they find the study of morphemes interesting and challenging. That’s where Morpheme Mondays comes in. In a blog entitled “Morpheme Mondays,” I will provide discussions of morphemes and supply related activities. I will attempt to make the discussions relevant and engaging. The first Morpheme Mondays blog will appear on Sunday, March 15, and will explore morphemes related to spring. The blog is designed for grades 3-4 and up and is even appropriate for any secondary students who are not familiar with the morphemes being introduced.