Guide to Teaching Prefixes and Suffixes

Familiarity with Greek and Latin roots, as well as prefixes and suffixes, help students to understand the meaning of new words and increase their vocabulary. This post contains all you need for effective and engaging lessons that will teach, reinforce, and review prefixes and suffixes with your students using UDL.

Teaching Prefixes and Suffixes Using UDL

Adding universal design when teaching anything is really about adding variety.

When teaching and learning prefixes and suffixes it helps to not only have good examples and clear definitions, but also include multiple means of expression and practice. Giving multiple opportunities to practice and review vocabulary helps all students increase their understanding of morphology.

What is UDL (Universal Design for Learning)?

The goal of UDL is to use a variety of teaching methods to remove any barriers to learning through building in flexibility that can be adjusted for every student’s strengths and challenges.

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Universal Design for Learning offers flexibility in the ways students access material and show what they know. Variability is the rule. Students may need to learn in different ways, using different materials, to learn the same things.

UDL essentially is best teaching practice for all students.

Important Vocabulary When Teaching Prefixes and Suffixes

Morphology is the study of how words fit together or are created by using morphemes, including prefixes, roots, and suffixes. Knowing the different morphemes in a word allows one to not only figure out its meaning, but also determine the word’s part of speech. You can learn more about morphology at one of my favorite word websites, Membean.
Morphemes are meaning based, dividing words based on their base/root, prefixes and suffixes.
prefix– a morpheme added in before the root/stem of a word that adds or changes meaning
suffix– a morpheme added in after the root/stem of a word that adds or changes meaning or indicates the part of speech of a word
affix– prefix or suffix
root word come from Latin or Greek. They usually do not stand alone in English, typically requiring a prefix or suffix to create a word. For example the root cred (believe) creates words credence and incredible.
Stem is another word for root
base words have meaning on their own, but they can also have prefixes and suffixes added to them to make new words. For example the word friend can stand on its own or it can create friendly or unfriendly if you add affixes to it.

How Should Teachers Teach Prefixes and Suffixes?

When teaching reading, I would dedicate a few days to do a deep dive into Greek and Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes at the beginning of the school year.

After reviewing the different types of morphemes, do a little bit every day or every week. Break down a vocabulary word of the day by morphology and review, review, review. Most students will remember or learn the various vocabulary words by doing a little consistently over time.

Through intentionally creating, finding and using resources with an intentional Universal Design for all learners, all of the students in your classroom will become masters of the English Language!

You will see that there are multiple ways to practice and review prefixes and suffixes listed below. This is the beauty of Universal Design, the flexibility and variability for all learners.

Research on effective vocabulary instruction ( including teaching prefixes and suffixes) seems to include:

Get students reading independently. We learn more new words through reading and listening than directly teaching.
Direct instruction with planned words each week. While reading gets the most words learned, teachers need an actual plan when it comes to the words we mean to intentionally teach.
Students need to connect new words to existing knowledge in a meaningful way. Look for similarities and differences in words, activate background knowledge and create connections.
Repetition, repetition, repetition. Students need frequent opportunities to read new words, say new words and write new words in a variety of context.
Teacher read-alouds help develop vocabulary. Check out my Teacher Read Aloud post here.
Teach context clues and word parts. Students are more successful in learning new words if they know how to figure out the meaning of an unknown word by getting help from the words, sentences and text features surrounding the unknown word.
Word roots and word parts (affixes) help students to break down words into units of meaning.
Students can research the history of a word’s origin. This is a great activity for students who ace a spelling pretest. What do they do for the whole week, study more for the 100% they got on Monday? No, have them research the etymology of a word and present it to the class!
Make time for students to play and explore word games during the day. Puns, riddles, word scrambles, riddles, tongue twisters and word puzzles are a great way to extend the enjoyment and engagement of word study.

How should we NOT teach prefixes and suffixes? Do not make kids look up words in a dictionary to ‘learn’ the definitions and think that you are teaching vocabulary. This is just an activity someone is doing to be compliant, not turning the students into Shakespeare.

Video Resources for Teaching Prefixes and Suffixes

Latin and Greek roots and affixes. Did you know that Khan Academy covers more than just math topics? They have a fantastic array of vocabulary and grammar videos. This video is about 6 minutes long and does a nice job covering the ‘why’ of teaching & learning Greek and Latin Roots. At about the 5 minute mark of the video, they cover a very brief history of the English language. This would be a nice intro video for students whose focus may be on the shorter end.
Latin and Greek Root Words. This video is a nice overview of word morphology including roots and affixes (prefixes & suffixes)
Prefixes and Suffixes. This is a basic overview of affixes. This would be a good introduction for younger students or a quick review for upper elementary students.
Prefixes This video is is a nice intro/review for upper elementary and older students. So many time prefix and suffix videos come across as very primary. This is perfectly intermediate and a fantastic video to add to any morphology lesson.
Suffixes. This matches the prefix video. It is a perfect video for intermediate and older students.

Books to Use When Teaching Prefixes and Suffixes

Here are a few books that are great for introducing and reviewing prefixes and suffixes. These are especially great if you are just teaching prefixes and suffixes for the first time as a new teacher. They help give you a script in a way to review how these affixes work and provides multiple examples.

If You Were a Prefix

If You Were a Suffix

What is a Prefix? (Words are Categorical)

Dictionary of Prefixes and Suffixes: Useful English Affixes

Teachers Pay Teachers Resources to use When Teaching Prefixes and Suffixes

Interactive Notebooks- I like the visuals and tactile engagement that interactive notebooks creates. There is nothing that says ‘this is important to learn’ like taking notes, cutting them out and gluing them into a notebook. I haven’t found any one specific product on Teachers Pay Teachers that I use that meets all my needs, but I have a few teacher sellers that I mash up together to use.

I really like interactive notes that have a visual, with the stem and the meaning. I like the interactive notebook options by Mandy Neal- Teach with Simplicity and Lovin Lit. Both of these interactive notebooks are a really nice option for my visual learners. The only problem with both of these, through no fault of their own, is that I have a specific school district list of words I need to teach and it does not match the words they have created in their notebooks. It is very hit or miss and searching for the stems I need can feel a little overwhelming.

Anchor Charts & Notes– I really like the ease of Kirsten’s Kaboodle created with her prefix & suffix notes. I have added quite a few of her prefix and suffixes to my prefix/root/suffix word wall.

Morphology Word Searches– Looking for more practice with teaching word morphology? I created targeted word searches based off of common prefix, suffix and root words. I wanted to make an activity that could be more engaging than a regular worksheet and included a list of words. Sometimes it is hard to come up with multiple examples of words with a specific prefix, suffix or root.

I also made a free Phobia suffix word search- Phobia Suffix Free Word Search

Number Prefix Word Search Pack