Morphology (3-5)
Morphology is a powerful tool for improving spelling, decreasing cognitive load, and for unlocking meanings rather than simply decoding sounds; this is important especially for readers working with multisyllabic words. Rather than activities always having a clear correct or incorrect answer, students will be asked to use their newly gained morphemic knowledge to explore word meanings and the use of words in context.
In Functional Morphology, students will grow their word reading, spelling and meaning making skills through daily instruction and practice. Rather than instruction building from simple to complex as in the Functional Phonics scope and sequence, morphology instruction is built based on the common layers of language making up English (Anglo-Saxon, Latin & Greek.)
Scope & Sequence
Functional Morphology consists of three series:
Series 1 focuses on words from Anglo-Saxon or old English origin. This series has a primary goal of teaching the meaning of commonly used prefixes and suffixes as well as an introduction to Latin roots.
Series 2 shifts into a focus on learning the meaning behind common Latin roots with the ongoing review and use of prefixes and suffixes.
Series 3 introduces commonly used Greek combining forms. Lessons are clustered together in units with common themes.
The scope and sequence is also used as an easy navigation tool to access the lesson slides, teacher manuals, and assessments!
Instructional Materials
All lessons are created in Google slides are fully animated for ease of use and include 5 days of instruction and activities. Teacher scripts are included in the notes section of each slide.
Sample slides below include one day of a five-day lesson.
Sample lessons
series 3 sample
Teacher Manuals
Teacher Manuals can be printed per series, unit or lesson and include explicit scripts for each lesson component. Manuals allow teachers easy access to the instructional activities that aid in lesson planning and for easy access during instruction.
Student Materials
Students can fully engage in Morphology lessons with just a whiteboard/marker or a notebook/pencil!
ASSESSMENTS
Morphology includes a formative assessment for each lesson in which students use morphemic knowledge to spell words, identify meaning and use words with focal morphemes in context.
Each assessment has 3 parts:
Part 1-Spelling of morphemes and words: The instructor will dictate a word including the focal morpheme of the lesson as well as a sentence. Students are asked to spell the word.
Part 2-Multiple choice: Students will read two multiple choice questions and select the best appropriate answer from the a-d options. The questions range from identifying the meaning of a specific morpheme to identifying the best word or definition choice for the given questions.
Part 3-Morpheme usage: Students will write a sentence response to the provided questions. Students are asked to use the bolded, morpheme containing word in their response with proper spelling and grammatical usage.
Assessment manual
The Assessment Manual includes directions for accessing and administering assessments, a scoring rubric for each part and example scores, a flow chart of how to read and use data, as well as additional instruction strategies based on assessment data.
Data Tracker
Functional Morphology provides access to a digital data tracker. Data tracker can be used school-wide or for grade-level teams and provides pre-populated formulas for ease of viewing the student data to make instructional decisions.
