How To: Work With Derivational Suffixes

Derivational Suffixes and Context Clues Go Hand in Hand

My goal for any derivational suffix unit is to teach students to use context clues while

reading. I strive to consider what I do in real life as a skilled reader. For example, when I come across an unfamiliar word with -ate, I inherently know it must be some kind of action. The character or person is doing something. If a student uses the suffix to identify the unknown word as a thing, action, or descriptive word, they'll gain some meaning even if they're not exactly sure what the word means.

I've noticed that many of my students, including my native English speakers, have minimal syntactical knowledge. They are not aware that every sentence must have a subject and a verb. Note that my derivational units do not occur until the second semester after we've studied parts of speech with continuous reiteration and review. I intend to insert even more reiteration next year to compensate for this lack of knowledge. Teaching derivational suffixes not only improves vocabulary but grammar as well.

🖍 How the Routines Work

Type of "Thing", Action, or Description

I like to ask students to classify vocabulary. This reinforces the concept of parts of speech and using morphemes to draw conclusions about meaning. For noun derivational terms, students consider they are people, places, concrete, or abstract things. For verbs, as shown in the photo, students consider if the term can demonstrate mental and/or physical action. Adjectives and adverbs are trickier as there are endless ways in which they can be grouped. I ask students to consider the five senses, time/temporal, quantities, emotions, and pronouns.

Word Sums + Fill in the Blank

This exercise works well with terms with unbound bases (bases that do not require a suffix). Students can see how a word that is typically a noun or adjective can morph into a verb (or other part of speech) by adding a suffix. Lastly, students have to make meaning by inserting the correct word into a simple sentence.

This is often challenging as for many students, the sentence "sounds right" with either term. If it's a struggle, I ask them to consider if the sentence is missing a subject or an action.

I can increase the difficultly of this activity by requiring students to add two suffixes. This works well with bound bases (require affixes to function independently) and with suffixes that often pair together, as shown in the example with -ate and -ion.

Suffixes That Have Multiple Meanings

To make things complicated, a number of suffixes have multiple meanings. -er can mean "more" or it can mean "a person who/thing that". -ed can indicate nouns, verbs, and adjectives/adverbs. As in the example to the left, -s/es can mean "more than one" or it can express third person singular. The list goes on. A sentence is often needed for context. In this activity, students read for comprehension to determine the part of speech.

Check out the Interactive Unit Guides to see how these lessons can fit into units.