9-17-16
Teachers Pay Teacher Store Opening!

I am excited to share that I have opened my TPT store for Full Moons and Friday Afternoons. Click here: Full Moons and Friday Afternoons TPT Store .  The first activity I posted is a sample pack for 3rd grade morphology, prefixes il, im, in, and ir. Check it out for free!

Before beginning my mini-lesson, I prepared a chart with words that I planned to use to introduce these prefixes.  As we discussed each prefix, I added the appropriate prefixes, in a different color, to the words, discussing the chameleon prefixes im, il, and ir.  I wanted the children to see the distinction of the prefixes and the words.  So many times when they are reading and come to an unfamiliar long word, they try to guess the word rather than chunking it up. This is the reason I included the activity in which the students have to break apart the prefix from the word.

Chart for Mini-Lesson

After the mini-lesson, students worked in groups to assemble the words on a puzzle mat.

Assembling the Word  Puzzle

The first trial of this activity did not include the fill in the blank sentences or the "definition in your own words" section on the chart.  It was "Back to School" night and I didn't have any student work posted on the hall wall.  Quickly I pulled out some construction paper and drew grids with the following headings:  "word, prefix, base word, definition, definition in my own words".  As students entered the classroom that morning, I put them in groups of fours, gave them a word puzzle, and had them work on completing their chart.  The result is the work that went on the hallway wall. From that experience, I developed the chart to be a component in their interactive notebooks.

Making Morphology Chart

I actually thought about the "definition in your own words" first, but then realized that without context, students wouldn't know how to construct their own meaning.  Even if we used the words in sentences orally, there would be some with whom the meaning would not stick.  Out of this realization was born the idea of the fill in the blank sentences with context clues.  Students have to underline clue words in the sentences that help them decide which affixed word to use to complete the sentences.

In the regular sized packs, there are 24 words for each lesson.  Depending on your students, you may want to spread the lesson over 2 or 3 weeks instead of doing everything in one week. Available now:  Prefix Puzzlers il, im, in, ir and Prefix Puzzlers non, dis, un.  Stop on by my TPT store to check them out!

Happy Teaching!
~Gwen