Using evidence-based strategies for morphology instruction with middle and high school students.
Choosing targets for language and literacy intervention for middle and high school students can be challenging for SLPs and intervention specialists. Morphology instruction is an evidence-based method for improving vocabulary, comprehension, spelling, and decoding with your older students.
What is morphology?
Let’s analyze the word! The root morph means “form, shape.” The suffix ology means “the study of.” So what is morphology? It is the study of word formation.
Words are full of individual morphemes that carry semantic (word meaning) and syntax (grammar) information. As students progress to higher grades, academic language increases in complexity, and analyzing morphological units (roots, prefixes, and suffixes) can be particularly useful for decoding and determining the meaning of new words.
Should morphology be explicitly taught?
There is evidence that explicitly teaching morphology has a positive impact on reading comprehension, spelling, decoding, and vocabulary in typical students (Carlisle, 2003; Kuo & Anderson, 2006).
There are several small-scale studies that suggest that explicitly teaching morphology has a positive impact on language-impaired students.
Studies of typically developing students and language-impaired students have shown that students who participate morphological instruction are able to generalize learned morphemes to unknown words (Steele, 2014).
With mounting evidence that morphology instruction yields improved vocabulary, spelling, reading comprehension, and decoding, morphology is a great tool to add to your evidence-based interventions.
How should I teach morphology?
Morphology intervention should be systematic, hands on, and should provide ample opportunities for exposure and practice with morphemes.
There are three key targets to morphological intervention: morphological knowledge, morphological awareness, and morphological analysis (or word analysis).
Morphological knowledge is understanding that morphemes can change inflection or meaning.
Morphological awareness is a higher-level skill of recognizing and manipulating prefixes, roots, and suffixes.
Morphological analysis is the skill of determining the meaning of unknown words by using knowledge of morphemes (Steele, 2014).
Practical Morphology Activities for Older Students
I’ve used everything I’ve learned about morphology to develop my Morphology for older students activities. I’ve targeted 30 morphemes that are frequently-occurring and have high-value for middle and high school students.
You can get all 30 morphemes in my Morphology Bundle, or pick the morphemes that work best for you!
SET 1: aud, port, cycl, hydr, cent, multi-, tri-, re-, -able, and -less
SET 2: dis-, mono-, inter-, fore-, dic/dict, struct, flex, graph, -ment, -ist
SET 3: sub-, semi-, anti-, pre-, rupt, scrib/script, auto/aut, tract, -er/-or/-ar, -ly
What’s Included?
Each morpheme is introduced in two visually-appealing worksheets that follow EBP for morphology instruction. Relevant Tier 2 vocabulary words are included throughout each activity. (Printable and digital - Slides and TpT Easel - formats included)
Page 1 of cent introduction.
Page 2 of cent introduction
Pre & post-assessments and practice activities for multiple opportunities to analyze morphemes are included.
Even more Morphological Awareness and Analysis Activities
You can use the strategies below with my Morphology Units or with prefixes, roots, and suffixes relevant to your students’ curriculum!
Break down words and discuss how morphemes work together to form meaning. What happens when you add or delete a morpheme? (Example: un-break-able. What does it mean? What happens when you remove un-?)
Analyze unknown words using context and morphemes. What word parts look familiar? How can we “chunk” the word into parts? What do we know about the word parts? What is the function of the word in the sentence?
Word sorts - sort words based on matching morphemes. What do the words have in common?
Word webs - build deeper connections between word meaning and word relationships with word webs.
Morpheme families - make lists of words that include target morphmemes. How does the morpheme bring its meaning to each word?
Tense activities - How do some morphemes change the tense of a word (e.g. -ful in beautiful, careful, delightful)
Multi-sensory activities such as drawings, flash cards, and word walls.
Use them or lose them! Use words with target morphemes in sentences, stories, paragraphs, and projects.
Exposure, exposure, exposure. Repeated practice, lots of examples, and contextual opportunities help improve recall and generalization.
Tackling morphology can be overwhelming, and there are many strategies to teaching morphemes. For a deep dive, check out The ASHA publication Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, Volume 4, Issue 5, which focuses on derivational morphology and provides an excellent overview of research and intervention strategies for morphology instruction.
Should I include morphology in my intervention for middle and high school students? The final verdict…
After doing a deep-dive into the research, I can confidently say the morphological analysis should be a piece of your language and literacy intervention. Whether you systematically target morphemes or analyze words as they occur in the curriculum, students can benefit from improving their knowledge of prefixes, roots, and suffixes (Bourque Meaux & Walter 2020) . Morphology is a high-value target to add to your intervention with your middle and high school students!
Check out my Morphology Activities on TpT!
Resources:
Bourque Meaux, A & Wolter, J.A. (2020) Forum: Morphological Awareness as a Key Factor in Language-Literacy Success for Academic Achievement. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, Volume 51, Issue 3, 509-513
Katz, L. A., & Carlisle, J. F. (2009). Teaching students with reading difficulties to be close readers: A feasibility study. Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 40, 325–340
Steele, Sara (2014) Effects of Morphological-Based Intervention on Vocabulary Learning in School-Age Children With Language Learning Difficulties, EBP Briefs Volume 9, Issue 2, 1-5
