7 High-Impact Morphology Instructional Routines

If you’ve ever wondered about the HOW of morphology instruction, this blog post is for you!

If you’re looking for resources to support your morphology instruction, check out my FREE Morphology Instructional Routines download at the bottom of this post!

Morphological awareness is the ability to reflect on, analyze, and manipulate the morphemic elements in words, and is a critical component of students’ developing linguistic awareness

(Carlisle, 2010).

The benefits of explicitly teaching morphology are well-supported by extensive research. Intentionally dedicating time to morphology instruction improves students’ spelling, boosts vocabulary, enhances reading comprehension skills, benefits students with reading difficulties, supports language learning for multilingual students, facilitates comprehension of complex academic texts, and fosters ‘word curiosity’ and linguistic awareness.

While the benefits of building students’ morphological awareness are clear, knowing exactly HOW to do this can be confusing, especially if you are new to teaching morphology! The good news is, however, that morphology instruction doesn’t need to be complicated or require lengthy preparation!

As part of my own quest to more deeply understand the ‘how' of teaching morphology, I have compiled a list of seven high-impact morphology instructional routines that can be used to build students’ morphological awareness.

Implementing just a few key instructional routines consistently throughout your week can lead to significant improvements in students’ understanding of word structures, enhance vocabulary acquisition and develop within students a ‘word curious’ stance that will transfer across content areas. If you’re new to teaching morphology, consider choosing just one or two routines to try with your students to begin with!

1) Morphological Word Web

A morphological word web assembles multimorphemic families of words that are built using a common base. A morphological word web is “a highly efficient tool for showing students the well-ordered, consistent structure of spelling” (Bowers, P. 2013).

A personal favorite of mine, a morphological word web is an excellent way to visually show how a wide range of morphologically connected words are related in both meaning and structure.

Here’s an example of how a word web might look like for the base <rupt>:

Here are a few tips for implementing this instructional routine in your classroom:

Create the web with your students and vary the level of scaffolding depending on your students’ needs. If students are new to the routine, consider preparing in advance sets of words for students to add to the chart. As students become more familiar with how a morphological word web works, they can create their own in partnerships or small groups.
Use movable prefixes and suffixes (on sticky notes) as a scaffolding support when building words.
Place the base in the middle and explicitly teach the meaning. Adding a visual is a great scaffolding support!
Every word on the web must include the spelling of the base, except for suffixing changes.
Header words should be the stem for every word built underneath them.

2) Matrices and Word Sums

A word matrix is a visual tool that organizes a base, prefixes, and suffixes to show how different words within a family can be built. They are an extremely powerful tool for exploring the interconnectedness between spelling structure and meaning! They can be modified to be used at any level, from the early elementary years right through to upper elementary and beyond. When used in conjunction with word sums, word matrices are an excellent tool for developing students’ understanding of the well-ordered and structured nature of the English language.

A word sum clearly breaks down a word into its smaller, meaningful parts. The process of creating a word sum helps students to make strong visual connections with the morphemic structure of a word (Hamilton, 2020). Learning to build words in this way develops critical skills in analyzing more complex, multimorphemic words. An additional benefit of creating word sums is that they explicitly show suffixing spelling changes which helps students to understand the ‘why’ behind spelling variations in morphologically connected words.

3) Cloze Sentences

Cloze sentences help students to apply their understanding of the meaning of morphologically connected words within context. This is a great routine to use once students have a good understanding of a specific morpheme that you have been studying.

Cloze sentences explicitly target reading comprehension skills and develop students’ ability to draw upon context clues in order to decide which word fits correctly. Furthermore, they build an understanding of syntax and grammatical structure while promoting critical thinking skills! Cloze sentences can be a great way to quickly assess students’ understanding following morphology instruction!

Here’s how cloze sentences might look! Simply provide students with a bank of morphologically connected words and a set of fill-in-the-blank sentences:

4) Morpheme Scramble

A quick and simple routine that is easy to differentiate, a morpheme scramble requires students to unscramble the morphemes provided to build a multimorphemic word!

In the example below, the morphemes in the first set (blue) could be used to build the words ‘instruct’ and ‘instruction’. We could build the word ‘construct’, ‘constructed’, ‘destruct’ and ‘deconstructed’ using the morphemes in the green set. As you can see, we can increase the complexity of the task by using more morphemes within a scrambled set!

Here are some tips for implementing this routine:

Preparing for a morpheme scramble doesn’t need to be complicated! Simply display a set of morphemes on the board (or use sticky notes!) and have students unscramble the morphemes to create words. A great activity to use when you have a few spare minutes!
An easy way to vary the complexity of the activity is by providing more, or less, morphemes for students to unscramble.
To extend the task, have students identify a word correctly and then cover up the morphemes. Ask students to write the word without seeing the parts.
Be on the lookout for suffixing spelling changes! It can be beneficial for students to write a word sum to show where spelling changes occur.

5) Pronunciation Sort

A pronunciation sort is a great routine for demonstrating how words are connected in meaning and structure, despite pronunciation shifts.

This routine emphasizes the key message: “In English, the spelling of the building blocks of words, called morphemes (bases, prefixes and suffixes), remains consistent even when pronunciation shifts.” (Bowers, 2013).

Provide students with a set of morphologically connected words that demonstrate pronunciation changes (for example: sign/signal; child/children, heal/healthy). Create categories for students to sort the words into based upon the pronunciation shift. Be sure to explicitly focus on correct pronunciation during the sorting process and provide plenty of opportunities for verbal practice!

6) In or Out of the Family?

The ‘In or Out?’ sorting routine strengthens an understanding of the vital link between meaning AND structure in morphologically related words.

Within this task, students are provided with a set of words. They must decide if each word belongs in or out of the morpheme family. There are many ways you could develop a set of words to use within this sorting routine! Here are a couple of examples:

In the first example, students are focusing on the <sign> family. The set of words includes the word ‘draw’, which has a loose connection in meaning to ‘sign’. The word ‘draw’, however, does not connect in structure. The words ‘sing’ and ‘sigh’ look similar to the base <sign>, but are not connected in either structure or meaning.

In the second example, the focus is on the prefix pre-. The list of words provided includes words where the same letters appear in a sequence but do NOT function as the morpheme pre-. Therefore, they do not belong in the pre- family.

This routine prompts students to look closely at the spelling structure of a word while also considering its meaning, reinforcing critical word analysis skills.

7) Parts Card Strategy

A modified version of the Frayer Model strategy, ‘Parts Cards’ (Stant, N. 2003) are an effective way to introduce morphologically complex vocabulary.

This is a particularly powerful tool when introducing new vocabulary within the academic content areas and could be used as a way to build background knowledge prior to engaging with more complex texts. For example, if students are about to participate in a unit about ecosystems, Parts Cards could be used to deconstruct key vocabulary in anticipation of the learning ahead (For example: ecosystem; biodiversity; biome). Developing an understanding of a few key morphemes (e.g. eco- ; bio - ) has the power to lead to significant improvements in students’ ability to tackle multimorphemic words within complex texts!

Here’s how a Parts Card might look: