Morpheme Monday Lessons is a weekly blog that develops morphemic analysis. The blog is designed for grades 3-4 and up but would be appropriate for any students in the upper grades who are not familiar with the morphemes being introduced. Past blogs are posted on buildingliteracy.org under the heading “The Building Literacy Blog” so that you can view previous Morpheme Monday posts.
Note to the Teacher
Word sums are a way of analyzing the structure of words by dividing them into their morphemes, which are their meaningful parts. Every word has a base, which carries the core meaning of a word. A word may also have prefixes and suffixes.The word unfinished would be divided as un+finish+ed >unfinished. Bases can be free or bound. Free bases are words and can stand on their own. The words act, help, and finish are free bases. Bound bases cannot stand on their own and need one or more affixes or combining forms to create a word. The base -ject is a bound base. Words can be formed by adding affixes: eject, ejected, ejection, reject, etc. Bound bases can be difficult to identify. For instance, the base for discussion is cuss. Identifying morphemes is a crucial skill. If students can identify the erase in erasure or the act in activate, they would be better able to recognize these words or derive their meanings through morphemic analysis and context. For a discussion of word sums and a tool for creating them refer to http://www.neilramsden.co.uk/microscope/introduction/base.html
For Students
Morpheme Monday
On the first Morpheme Monday, morphemes were explained. Morphemes are word parts that have meaning. The word unhelpful has three morphemes: un+help+ful. The main morpheme is the base. Help is the main morpheme in unhelpful, so it is the base. The morphemes un and ful have been added to the base. Un is a prefix. Prefixes come before the base. Ful is a suffix. It comes after the base. The base is the part of a word that is left after you take away any prefixes or suffixes. New words can be made by adding to a base. See how many words can be made by adding to the base act.
Act
The base act means “to do.” An action (act+ ion) means something that has been done. An actor (act+or) is one who plays a part in a movie, play, or TV series. The actor yelled to show that the character she was playing was angry. An active (act+ ive) person is someone who does something. An activity (act+iv(e)+ity) is something that people do. Playing sports is a favorite activity for many people. Active people like activities. Sometimes people react (re+act). They do something because of some action that has taken place. When our team scored the winning goal, we reacted (re+act+ed) by cheering and clapping. Actual (act+ual) means that something was really done. It wasn’t make-believe. In our visit to the Space Museum, we saw part of the actual spacecraft that took astronauts to the moon for the first time.
Word Sums
One way to show the separate morphemes in a word is to do a word sum. In a word sum, you divide a word into its parts by using plus signs. The word unhelpful is divided as un+help+ful>unhelpful. The word ageless is written as age+less> ageless. Morphemes are different from syllables. Syllables are separated by sounds: car-toon-ists. Morphemes are separated by meanings: cartoon+ist+s>cartoonists. Write the word sums for the following words:
1. certainly __________________________________________________________
2. cheerfully _________________________________________________________
3. enjoyment _________________________________________________________
4. feverishly __________________________________________________________
5. unbreakable _______________________________________________________
Sometimes words that look as though they are unknown have a base morpheme that is known. For example, in a test given to hundreds of students, most students were unable to say what the word erasure means. But if you do a word sum, you can see that the base morpheme is eras(e). (The final e was dropped off when the suffix –ure was added.) An erasure is something that has been erased or rubbed out. The following words look hard, but their base morphemes are easy. Rewrite them as word sums. Use the base morphemes to help you figure out what the words mean. Then underline the correct meaning of each of the words.
1. heroic _______________________________________________________
a) old b) brave c) funny
2. habitual _______________________________________________________
a) easy to do b) done all or most of the time c) easy to explain to others
3.lessen_______________________________________________________
a) take some away b) move to another place c) help with
4. spacious _______________________________________________________
a) does not cost much b) is easy to understand c) has lots of room
5. fortify _______________________________________________________
a) tear down b) make stronger c) get rid of
Answers
1.certain+ly >certainly
2. cheer+ful+ly>cheerfully
3. enjoy+ment >enjoyment
4. ever+ish+ly >feverishly
5. un+break+able >unbreakable
1. hero+ic>heroic b) brave-like a hero
2. habit+ual>habitual b) done all or most of the time-like a habit
3. less+en>lessen a) take some away- to make less
4. spac(e)+ious>spacious c) has lots of room-has lots of space
5. fort+ify>fortify b) make stronger-like a fort