Teaching & Learning Page

Spotlight on Teaching and Learning: Morphology Instruction at Surfside

Morphology is the study of words and how they're formed. It looks at the parts of words called “morphemes", which are the smallest units of meaning, like <cat> or <-s>. We can see how words are built and work together by breaking them into their morphemes. Explicit teaching of prefixes and suffixes is crucial for students reading and spelling skills, particularly within the development of vocabulary and comprehension (two of the big 6).

Affixes: An affix is a group of letters that have meaning. For example, <-ing> means “happening now”. We fix these groups of letters before (prefix) or after (suffix) a base to form a new word. We also teach children word sums, such as re + view + ing à reviewing.

Fun fact: There are 9 common prefixes make up 75% of prefixed words, 6 suffixes make up 76% & 12 Latin bases make up 70,000 words in the English language. 

We are teaching morphemes from Foundation to Year 6 starting with <-s>,  <-ed> and <-ing> through explicit and consistent, predictable routines.