About one student out of every four in the upper elementary and secondary school lacks adequate decoding skills (Tortorelli, 2025). As they progress through the early grades, most students learn basic phonics. However, a significant number fail to acquire the skills they need to cope with the reading demands they meet in upper-elementary and secondary school. In two large-scale studies of students in grades 5 and above and 3 and above, researchers found that students whose decoding skills were below a foundational benchmark made little to no growth in comprehension scores over a 3-year period (Wang et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2024). This threshold has come to be known as the “decoding threshold.” An exceptional resource for educators seeking to help students who are below the threshold is PAL (Project for Adolescent Literacy).
Created by educators to support educators who work with older struggling readers, PAL, which can be accessed at https://seekcommonground.org/pal, is an outstanding resource that lists materials, curricula, strategies, and supportive practices for working with this population. PAL’s Resource Bank features items submitted by educators and publishers that have been reviewed by PAL in terms of alignment with research, evidence of efficacy, and availability. Assessment Resources include nine instruments that can be used with adolescents. All nine of the instruments are free. Instructional Resources features 23 routines and programs. A number of programs develop syllabic and morphemic analysis, which are areas of the greatest need for older struggling readers. I particularly liked the following two teacher-created programs, but all the routines and programs listed are of high quality.
Morph It, a teacher created activity by Molly Cavanaugh, presents a series of lessons in which students form words by adding prefixes and suffixes to bases. In this digital-based unit, students are introduced to prefixes, assimilated prefixes, and suffixes. Then they practice putting together words from word matrices focused on the most common bases (roots), read and listen to Membean’s Rootcast podcast on that base, add words to a vocabulary log, and practice fluency with texts that include words with the bases, learn some rules for spelling and pronouncing bases, and have discussions with their teacher and/or peers about words they’re learning.
Literacy Through Language: Morpheme Magic by Dr. Shelley Blackwell, SLP. D., presents 20 plus lessons at grade levels 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Focus is on using morphemic analysis to develop vocabulary. The program includes an introduction by the author, scope and sequence, presentation slides, student booklets, and instructional guides. Also available is an intensive small-group program: Morpheme Madness. All of these are free and are available at https://sites.google.com/view/literacythroughlanguage/home/morphology-instruction.
References
Wang, Z., Sabatini, J., O’Reilly, T., & Weeks, J. (2019). Decoding and reading comprehension: A test of the decoding threshold hypothesis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(3), 387–401.
Wang, Z., O’Reilly, T., & Sutherland, R. (2024). Replicating decoding threshold in ReadBasix®: Impact on reading skills development (Research Memorandum No. RM-24-06). ETS. https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/RM-24-06.pdf