Morphemes are the meaningful parts of words. For example, the word cat has one morpheme while the word cats has two morphemes: 'cat' and 's'. The 'cat' signifies an animal whilst the 's' indicates that there is more than one (ACARA, 2014). Morphemic spelling strategies are about students understanding the meaning behind parts of words, so that they can spell them better (Adoniou, 2013). If you know that "ed" means that something happened in the past, you are much more likely to write that instead of "t", a really common mistake that students make when relying solely on their "sound it out" strategies. The video below, from Nessy, is a cute way of introducing plurals to older students.
Spelling investigations (the inspiration behind the website's name!) are a great way to get kids thinking about the meaning behind words. You can read more lesson ideas about spelling investigations in the lesson ideas section. They allow students to learn about spelling in a Inquiry based way, that encourages student exploration and questioning. Morphemes are great ways for students to become spelling investigators as they can explore things like "ed" and plurals. They are not limited to morphemes though, spelling investigations cover all the strategies, even phonics!
To help develop morphemic strategies (Westwood, 2005):
To help develop morphemic strategies (Westwood, 2005):
- Practice word building with students. Have short word study sessions on different prefixes and suffixes, talking about the meaning and getting them to play a game, such as this one.
- Teach students knowledge of word structure. For example, having a word investigation on the "ed" ending.
- Teach students about compound words and sort them into categories.