Morphology

 

Structured synthetic phonics teaches students how words come apart into units of sound (phonemes) and how different graphemes represent these sounds. Alongside this, learners must also develop an understanding of how words also come apart into their units of meaning and how words can be built up, or pulled down to alter their meaning and their function in text. This broad area of word study is known as morphology but also links to grammar.

 

Whereas phonemes are the smallest unit of sound in a word, morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a word. Only in the last decade have reading researchers come to appreciate and emphasise the critical importance of teaching morphology and structured, synthetic phonics in a multisensory way to students with disorders of the printed word.

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The Word Cracker

 

The Word Cracker clearly illustrates the orthographic segmentation of words, making it easier for learners to see how multisyllabic words are formed from base words or roots and affixes. Using the Word Cracker, teachers and students can easily manipulate affixes, roots and bases, either by using the magnet tiles, or dry erase marker, to see how changing morphemes can change the meaning of the word and how it works around other words. As well as developing grammatical understanding, this process supercharges vocabulary development as students rapidly build their lexicon from known words to more morphologically complex derivatives of these words.

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In this workshop, Sally or Bill will teach teachers what they need to about morphology and how to use the Word Cracker and the accompanying manual to take their reading and spelling teaching to the next level. 

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