Reading Lesson Idea: Teaching Word Structure

Understanding word structure and being able to identify root or base words, prefixes and suffixes will give your student valuable vocabulary-building skills.

• Paper and pencil.
• An interesting and challenging text.
• Handout: Prefixes & Suffixes
• There is another list on pp. 174-176 of Teaching Adults

• Create several “word families.” Example: happy, happiness, happily, unhappy, unhappiness, unhappily, etc. You and your student can take turns thinking of new members for the family.
• Use the word family to show how to use word structure as a cue to meaning: identify the root or base word and suffix or prefix in each case.
• Advanced: choose a reading from an interesting and challenging text and find all the the words with either a prefix or suffix. Based on the word's structure, guess its meaning. Check your guesses with a dictionary.