WHAT IS MORPHOLOGY?
Morphology is the study of the meaningful units of words. Morphology is different from phonology which is the study of the sounds of words. Interested in phonology? We have a program for that too! Click here to learn more! A morpheme may have one sound, or it may have multiple sounds.
In morphology, we have base words, roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Sometimes you will hear prefixes and suffixes referred to as affixes. Base words are those words that have meaning all by themselves. For example, play. Notice that play may have multiple different meanings (the action you do at recess and what you perform on a stage), but you need the entire word. You can’t break it into smaller parts of meaning.
We can add information to base words using prefixes and suffixes. In this blog post, we will be showing examples of how we can add suffixes to show that an action is happening continuously. For example, I was walking to school. We also call these present participles, but that is a big mouthful for students who are learning it.
Adding -ing to a verb can also turn it into a gerund, which is actually a noun. For example, driving can be used as a noun in the sentence: Driving is my favorite hobby. We are not going to discuss gerunds in this program as they are beyond the scope of second grade when most kids learn about -ing.
There are many different types of continuous verb suffixes in English. There are so many, it is best to teach them with a systematic and explicit program. So, that is what I created.
As a note, there are not as many continuous verb suffixes and there are past tense verb suffixes. This program is only five days of instruction with an additional five days of review.
The program is brilliantly simple. First, you introduce the concept of continuous verbs to your students. I do not have this part in a slide. You can show a YouTube video or give a hands-on explanation in your classroom. Continuous verbs are also a lesson in my Learning to Write program. You can check that out here.
Once students understand the concept of past tense verbs, they are ready for some of the suffix patterns. The number of patterns you teach to your students will definitely depend on their grade level. The program uses all of them, but you don’t have to teach every pattern.
Using the Canva presentation, you will introduce one continuous verb suffix pattern using the chart that references all of the rules. We want students to see that they are learning just one rule out of many. (I probably wouldn’t do this with kindergarten or maybe even first grade, but second graders and up can definitely handle it.)
You explicitly teach the rule and give some examples (all of this information is in the chart). Then, students get either their notebooks or a whiteboard ready. The slide after the chart has a base word that follows the pattern you just taught. Students apply what they learned to make the base word past tense. (We are working on creating past tense verbs, so all of the base words will be present tense verbs.)
Here is where the magic happens, after day 1, you will get a mix of the current rule being studied and the past rules. Students are constantly coming back to what they learned in the days before. This repeated, spaced practice allows time for forgetting and then remembering which is how we get the strongest learning. Are you worried your students will get too stressed out trying to remember the rules? This is a low-stakes activity. The answers are always given on the next slide. Kids can write down their answers, and immediately check for accuracy. When doing work like this, getting that immediate feedback is what makes learning sticky.
Curious about the order of the program? Check it out!
CONTINUOUS VERBS SUFFIX 1
The most common suffix for making a verb continuous is -ing. For example, laugh becomes laughing.
Since this is the easiest and more common suffix for making a verb continuous, we teach it on day one of the program.
CONTINUOUS VERBS SUFFIX 2
The second continuous verb suffix we teach is for verbs that end in the letter e. In this case, we drop the e and add -ing. For example, close becomes closing.
CONTINUOUS VERBS SUFFIX 3
The third continuous verb suffix we teach is -ing for words that end in a vowel + y. For example, the play becomes playing. We teach this as a separate rule only because plural nouns and past tense verbs followed this pattern, and we want to create as many connections as possible as students are learning.
CONTINUOUS VERBS SUFFIX 4
The fourth continuous verb suffix we teach is -ing for words that end in consonant + y. For example, cry becomes crying. So far, words that end in consonant + y have dropped the y when a suffix is added. This suffix does not follow that pattern. That is why were are explicitly teaching it.
CONTINUOUS VERBS SUFFIX 5
The fifth continuous verb suffix we teach is for words that end in a short vowel + one consonant. With these words, we double the consonant before we add -ing. For example, jog becomes jogging.
If you are counting, that is five days of morphology instruction. Plus, you get five days of review for the following week and five more days of mixed review to use later in the year.
This program sounds pretty amazing, right?! You would probably pay a lot, at least a few dollars, for the convenience of having everything prepped and ready to go, right?! Well, I am not going to ask you to pay a couple of dollars. In fact, I am not going to ask you to pay anything. You can have this program for free. Click the picture below to go to the view-only version of my Canva slides. It is yours to use to teach your students. Just please don’t sell it or give it away as your own work. One final ask. If you use this program and you love it, please show us some love and let people know about where you got it.
Here is the link. Just click on the picture.