Reading Success with Morphemes
You know your 3rd – 5th grader should be able to read that word. You want to ensure your son or daughter has the basic phonics skills for reading success, but are you really going to start with the word ‘cat’? Of course not. That’s a baby word! Nothing would turn your 3rd grader off faster than that.
Instead, you, mom friend, are going to be smart about helping your older child to read. You’re going to help your struggling 3rd – 5th grade reader practice basic phonics inside bigger words. To do this, you’re going to need some basic morpheme knowledge. This is exactly what I’m going to share today. So, what on earth is a morpheme? I’m glad you asked. Let’s get ready to go deeper into this advanced phonics knowledge you can use to support your 3rd – 5th grader to experience reading success at home.
What on earth is a morpheme? A morpheme is the smallest unit of a word that carries meaning and cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts. Morphemes can be whole words, like “cat,” or word parts, such as the plural suffix “-s”. There are two main types: free morphemes, which can stand alone as words (e.g., “dog, book, run “), and bound morphemes, which cannot stand alone and must be attached to other morphemes (e.g., “un-” in “unable”). Reading success with older children can be achieved using morphemes.
How are morphemes different from phonemes? A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language that distinguishes meaning, while a morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language. Think of phonemes as the basic building blocks of sound and morphemes as the basic building blocks of meaning. For example, the word “cat” has three phonemes (/k/, /a/, /t/) but is a single morpheme because it’s the smallest unit of meaning for that word.
Bases (sometimes called the root word or base) and affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are all morphemes, which are the meaningful building blocks that construct words. Example: undone, recharge, disliked, bicycle, trigraph, station, option. Help your child manipulate morphemes to achieve reading success!
How do I teach my struggling 3rd – 5th grader to read with success? Teach your child to read larger words with multiple morphemes, which is the fancy phonics term for words with a prefix or suffix added? Teach your child 2 prefixes and one suffix. I recommend beginning with these two prefixes: re and un (unseen, unkind, undo, unsafe, unhappy, uncover, unclip, unlace, unroll).
