Morphology (WHY)
The WHY of morphology
Many academic words that students learn in school often share morphological roots. So, knowing some morphemes not only increases students’ definitional knowledge of those words but also helps them infer the meanings of the unknown words they encounter. It is literally like having the key to the secret code of academic text.
Additionally, those academic words learned in school often appear across subjects and usually share common roots. That means when students learn even a handful of morphemes, they gain much more than one new word; they gain access to entire morphological word families. For example, learning port (“to carry”) opens the door to transport, import, portable, and portfolio. In this way, morphemic knowledge boosts both definitional understanding and the ability to infer the meanings of unfamiliar words in novel contexts.
Morphology is a super strategy
By teaching morphology, we:
Unlock meaning within individual words, strengthening overall comprehension.
Provide entry points that help students get intimidating words off the page and into their working vocabulary.
Build a morpheme library in students’ minds, allowing them to connect known parts to new words across texts and subjects.
Develop flexible strategies that enable students to both break down unfamiliar words and construct new ones to express their own ideas.
Recognizing and using morphemes doesn’t just help with one tricky word, it equips students with a lifelong strategy for tackling complex texts.
Coming up next
In our next newsletter, we’ll share practical, high-impact strategies for teaching morphology in the primary years (Kindergarten to Grade 6). After that, we’ll explore how these practices evolve in secondary classrooms to set up older students for success, when morphological knowledge can help readers unlock up to 95% of the academic words on the page.
Until then, try flexing your own morphological muscles: the next time you pick up a text, try and spot the morphemes, notice how they work together, and consider how each one shapes your understanding of the sentence, the paragraph, and the text as a whole. You might be surprised at how quickly you start seeing the hidden architecture of language, and how much power it gives you as a reader.
