Morphology Q&A transcript
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. How long should a morphology lesson last?
Elaine Stanley:
In the early stages, it would be a good half an hour, maybe even more when you're introducing it, and especially to the younger students, because you've got all those parts of the lesson and the responses and the routines and everything. But once you get going and the students are really familiar with that routine, it can actually be about 20 minutes for a lesson.
And it depends really on whether you choose to do a full morphology review at the start of the lesson. That will expand the time out. Or you spread that out over your phonics reviews and just do part of the review. But it's a really good, solid 20-minute lesson, power packed, but it's actually quite short in terms of your day.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. How do I fit morphology instruction in?
Elaine Stanley:
In our progression, we've got it as part of our phonics sequence. As I said before, you would include the morphology lesson when you get to that in the progression, in whichever phase it's in. And then the morphology lesson would replace a phonics lesson for that, whenever you're teaching that morphology concept.
I know in some schools they choose to teach vocabulary explicitly. They make time in their literacy block for explicit vocabulary sessions, and then they would alternate maybe a vocabulary focus and a morphology lesson, maybe one of one, one of the other, or two vocabulary, one morphology. They just decide as a school how often they're going to teach them and where they're going to fit really in their literacy block that works for you.
I know other schools, whenever they want to include a morphology lesson, they've just replaced part of a writing session. Or even a spelling, if they do explicit spelling, they've replaced that with a morphology lesson. It's wherever it fits, really.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. How can I support students to apply their knowledge of morphology?
Elaine Stanley:
The first thing is to support them through oral language. Encourage them and model using the right suffixes or tenses. You often get things like, ‘I brang it’, instead of, ‘I brought it’. It's helping them apply the right tense and suffixes and prefixes and everything correctly in speech.
Then it would be supporting them through their reading and writing. In reading, students are learning to sound out words, but once they've got morphological knowledge, they can also look at the morphemes in the word to help them work out the meaning of a word, especially an unknown word. It's good for them to then be practising applying that.
The best way to build their capacity to apply what they're learning is in that review, the morphology review, because you're keeping everything really at the forefront of their mind and they're learning to really apply it quickly and efficiently. The review's a really important part in helping them apply.
And then in spelling, in writing, it's really checking their spelling, but also thinking about the spellings for particular morphemes they know and checking at that level as well, not just on sounds.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. Where does morphology come into the curriculum?
Elaine Stanley:
For Foundation, it's part of the Phonic and word knowledge sub-strand in the Australian Curriculum. Students really begin by understanding that words carry meaning and that you can have more than one meaningful part. For example, dog has a different meaning to dogs, as we said before.
Then after that, as they progress up through Grade 1, Grade 2 and further up, students are learning about word families and words that are related to each other by their bases, but then there might be different prefixes and suffixes added. For example, it could be play, plays, played, playing, know it's the same base, but different endings or prefixes have been added.
Then as they go up, then they would start to learn about Latin and Greek roots. But that would be Grade 4, 5, 6, they start to introduce those as well.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. How does morphology instruction help vocabulary development?
Elaine Stanley:
Morphology contributes to vocabulary development because when you can identify the meanings of parts of words, then you can use them to work out the meaning of words as a whole. When you come across a new word that you haven't heard or read before, the morphemes in it help you to piece together the meaning of that new word based on its parts.
Morphology really brings an extra layer of understanding of the English spelling system and that spelling-to-meaning connection. Where standard spelling is used to represent morphemes and they carry a consistent meaning, then it's a really reliable source of information for students to use the morphemes to work out the meaning of words that they encounter and come in contact with.
And then as students learn more and more morphemes and understand their meaning, their vocabulary increases because the number of words that they're able to read, write and spell – and understand in spoken language as well – increases, and also the complexity of words that they can understand as well, because they start to learn more complex morphemes and Latin and Greek roots and all those sorts of things as they learn more and more about morphology.
So really it can help increase vocabulary for spoken vocabulary and reading vocabulary and writing vocabulary. With reading, when you come across a word you don't know, the first port of call is to use your phonics or your code knowledge to really work out what that word is and lift it off the page.
But then the extra layer of unlocking the code is using morphological knowledge because then you can look at parts of the words and based on what you know about their meaning, you can piece that together to arrive at a meaning as well for the word. And also using context of how the word is used within a text contributes to that as well, but morphology really helps students in that area.
Thinking about your writing vocabulary with spelling, when you want to write a word, again, you start with phonics first. You're thinking of the sounds in the word and then the letter–sound correspondences to write that word. But if you've got that morphological knowledge, then it really gives you that understanding of the standard spellings that are used regardless sometimes of the sound they make for some of those prefixes and suffixes at the beginning and ends of words. If students are really confident in knowing how to spell words, then they're more likely to use a bigger range of vocabulary in their writing as well.
It can also help you as well if you've got that morphological knowledge and you hear a word that you don't know the meaning of, but you can pick out some morphemes that you do know the meanings of, it can help you understand some spoken words as well. It really increases vocabulary in all of those areas for students.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. With all the advice on what to do with morphology, is there a key point or two on what not to do, what to avoid with our junior primary students?
Elaine Stanley:
I would say one of the most important things is to make sure that you're working with base words that students can read and spell, so they have the code knowledge for, when you're adding prefixes and suffixes to them. You want the focus of the learning to be on learning about the new prefix or suffix and its meaning and how it alters the meaning of a word that it's added to. You don't want students struggling with the word itself.
That's the first thing I would say. Just be really strategic about which words you choose for your lessons and make sure students have the code knowledge to work with those as a starting point before you add prefixes and suffixes to them.
Also, I'd say it's really important to be systematic about which parts of morphology you teach when. You want to introduce the simplest ones first that really relate to where students are at in their reading and writing and spelling, and then build up from there. The curriculum guides you on that as well, but being really strategic about what you introduce when is really important.
The other thing I'd say is not to introduce Latin or Greek roots too soon in the process because when you start introducing those, it's prefixes and suffixes that are added to those to make words that students will recognise. They have to have a really good understanding and a good bank of known prefixes and suffixes first before you start learning about roots that they can be added to, to make words.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. How is what you have shown different to structured word inquiry for morphology?
Elaine Stanley:
Structured word inquiry uses a different approach from what we're showing. It's an inquiry approach. Often you begin with a word first as your starting point, and then you look at what that word means and you examine the structure of the word, so how it's made up of bases or prefixes or suffixes. You might explore the etymology, so the origin and the history of that word, and then possibly make connections to other words and form word families. Students often form a word map showing their understanding of that word and how it's related to other words that they know.
We're really coming at this from the other side and saying that the way we instruct in morphology is working explicitly. Starting with the morpheme first and explaining, looking at the spelling and the meaning of the morpheme and then building up to that word level.
Often, follow-up activities after explicit instruction, when you introduce a new morpheme and students start to create a bank that they know well, then you would do that inquiry follow-up in terms of our instruction. Looking at words with morphemes that are known and unpacking the meaning of the word and splitting it up into known morphemes or even building words using all the morphemes or roots and morphemes that they know. It's really coming at things from two different ends.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. What is meant by the terms free morpheme and bound morpheme?
Elaine Stanley:
A free morpheme is a standalone word, so it carries meaning on its own in English. A bound morpheme has to be attached to another morpheme or morphemes to carry meaning.
A simple example is the word dogs. The free morpheme would be dog; you can't break that down any smaller in terms of meaning. That carries meaning on its own, so it's a free morpheme. But the s in dogs is a bound morpheme, so that has to be attached to a word to carry meaning, and in this case, more than one dog.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. What is the difference between a derivational morpheme and an inflectional morpheme?
Elaine Stanley:
A derivational morpheme can be either a prefix or a suffix, and it's added to a word to alter its meaning, or when it's added, it alters its meaning. For example, if you had unhappy, you've got happy as your base, and then you add un-, so the prefix un-, and it changes the meaning to mean the opposite of happy. So that's a derivational morpheme.
Inflectional morphemes are only suffixes and they're added to words really to change grammar so that the words work in the context of a sentence. They show tense. They might show the number of things, that you're talking about more than one. They can show possession, or they can be used for comparison between things.
An example would be when you add -ed or -ing to a word to change the tense. So -ed being something's already happened, it's past tense, and -ing meaning it's happening now. They're inflectional morphemes if they change the grammar around the word or within the sentence.
I would say to people, because it can be quite confusing when you see all these different terms, that you don't need to really get hung up on that terminology. Because, basically, if you think about morphology as really introducing parts of words like prefixes and suffixes, adding them to base words or, later on, adding them to roots, and thinking about how the meaning of the words change when they're added, and then how those words operate in sentences, that's really all we're doing with morphology. If you keep it that simple, it's easier for teachers as well, I think.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. How do you introduce the Latin and Greek roots to students?
Elaine Stanley:
You would do that in the same way that you introduce prefixes and suffixes. You would introduce the root explicitly, explain how it's spelled, how you say it, and what it means, and then you would add a range of known prefixes and suffixes to that root to create words and really unpack what the meanings of the words would be.
The simplest example I always use is reporter, which is a really familiar word to everyone. In the middle of that, you've got the root, ‘port’, Latin root, which means ‘to carry’, but then we've added a prefix and a suffix to that. So, we've got re- at the beginning, which means ‘back or again’, and -er at the end, which means ‘a person or thing that does something’. If you put them together, a reporter is a person who carries information back.
It's starting with the root and explaining what that means and then adding on prefixes and suffixes, but in exactly the same way we would add a prefix or suffix to a base word, same sort of process. The only thing, as I said before, is that it's really important students have that known bank of prefixes and suffixes to add to the root. Otherwise, you're going to overload them and they're having to learn all of them at once instead of just focusing on that root that you're teaching about.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Great. Thanks, Elaine. So I guess teachers could use the morphology instructional model to teach the Latin and Greek roots as well, the same as they do with the other morphemes.
Elaine Stanley:
Exactly the same, yes.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. What does intervention look like for morphology instruction?
Elaine Stanley:
If you're using explicit instruction, as we've demonstrated, it would be exactly the same instructional model. The difference is you're moving to a small group for intervention. You will follow the same progression, the same lesson structure as you would with the whole class, but you'll have that higher degree of teacher support and guided practice within the lesson, so in exactly the same way that we have shown previously with our phonics lessons.
It's the same instructional model from Tier 1 to Tier 2 to Tier 3, but what changes is the group size decreases and the level of teacher support increases. And then the really important thing as well in an intervention space is that review, that constant review of previously learned content and repeated practice in applying what students have learned is really important.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. How do I begin teaching older students about morphology?
Elaine Stanley:
Older students love learning about morphology in my experience. You can still teach it in the same explicit way with the same lesson structure, but you might not labour over certain parts in as much detail as we did with our demonstration for the younger years. But essentially, it's still introducing the morpheme, working it to the word level and then within sentence level, and looking at how combining morphemes changes the meaning of words.
What I've found with older students is they love it because sometimes they know things about the language, but they don't know why they know it. They really enjoy finding out why certain things are the way they are in terms of spelling as well. Same with spelling. With all your spelling generalisations as well, but especially with morphology too, they love that. And those discussions you have too about the origins of words and how they've come into the language and everything is really, really fun with the older students, too.
One thing I've found that they really like to do is record what they're learning and then they can keep adding to it. They can add more examples of more complex words with the same morphemes. They love keeping a record and building on their knowledge. And they will actually go away and run with it and find more complex words with whatever you've shown them. It really unlocks the puzzle of the code for them.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. What morphology resources would you recommend?
Elaine Stanley:
There are some great resources that have just come out recently. Of course, there's our progression. I should put that one first and say hopefully that's helpful to show how you can combine the phonics content with where the morphology slots in, and that's aligned with the Australian Curriculum. But there are also some great resources including the Reading Science in Schools website. There's a morphology progression. Again, that's Australian Curriculum–aligned, and it's got the scope and sequence, but also lots of resources there.
There's a morphology project that's hosted by Ochre. They've got amazing resources as well for schools, freely available. And SPELD New South Wales also has a phonics and morphology scope and sequence as well. We have actually put these links in our handout because they're great resources. People can have a look at those if they'd like to.
Literacy Hub phonics progression: https://www.literacyhub.edu.au/search/literacy-hub-phonics-progression/
Reading Science in Schools: https://readingscienceinschools.squarespace.com/
Ochre – The Morphology Project: https://thesyntaxproject2022.squarespace.com/the-morphology-project
SPELD NSW – Phonics and morphology scope and sequence: https://www.speldnsw.org.au/literacy/scope-and-sequence/
Online etymology dictionary: https://www.etymonline.com/
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. Is linking morphology to SSP lessons good or is an unrelated morphology scope and sequence better?
Elaine Stanley:
I think it's important to have a clear progression for your SSP instruction and the concepts you're going to teach as part of your phonics lessons, and also a clear progression for morphology with the concepts you want to teach so that you can be really strategic about what you're going to introduce when in both of those areas, because they are two different areas of study.
English is a morphophonemic language, which means its spelling system is based on both phonology and morphology. Students really need to build their knowledge and skills in both of those areas to really have a good grasp of the language and how it works. But having said that, it's fine in lessons where you combine them where it works.
For example, if you were teaching a lesson on -igh, and you're having students spell, at the word and sentence level, words with -igh they might spell the word sigh. And then you could introduce, if they've already learned some morphology content, you might say, now show me that word's happening now, and they can add -ing on the end.
You can get them to apply what they've learned, but when you're actually doing new learning or teaching new learning, then I'd keep both areas separate because they are very different areas as well. They complement each other, but in terms of instruction, they're separate lesson structures really.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. How do you fit morphology into an already established SSP program?
Elaine Stanley:
It's really a case of you can be guided by the curriculum expectations, and also all those resources I've already talked about, the Ochre and SPELD New South Wales and Reading Science in School resources, to see where things fit. But it's a matter of aligning what needs to be taught in each year level with your existing progression. And hopefully, again, our progression would help with that as well because we've aligned, in F to 2 at least, the morphology with the phonics there. That might be a good guide as well to get people started.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Thanks, Elaine. Yes, our progression does cover both the morphology as well as all the phonics that you need to teach. So that's all mapped out for you.
Q. How many morphology lessons per week?
Elaine Stanley:
I would say you won't necessarily teach a new morphology lesson, new content every week. It's really a case of looking at the curriculum expectations again and working backwards and working out, right, in this year level, what do students need to know? And then work backwards to how many lessons would that be, remembering that what you really want to do is keep that review happening and that repeated practice. And what you'll find is once you start instruction in morphology, it sort of creeps into all subject areas as well.
You've got lots of technical vocabulary that comes into maths and science and history, and you'll start to be introducing new vocabulary and your morphology will start coming in everywhere.
But you really want students to be consistent in applying what they do learn, that will be constant, but it won't necessarily mean there'll be a new morphology concept you teach every week, which is good news.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Yes, that's great. And as you say, when it comes in naturally, then you can really use that as a way to add that bit of extra morphology to all your other areas.
Q. Should I teach older students morphology even if they're still learning the basic code?
Elaine Stanley:
I would say you need to do both because as students start to move up the school, up through primary school and into secondary school, they're starting to encounter increasingly complex vocabulary and complex words, and then across different subject areas like we've just said. Teaching them morphology really helps them to understand those terms that they're going to come in contact with and the vocabulary they're introduced to and really help them to access that grade-level material. So that's really important to keep going.
And then it's a case of also backfilling the phonics areas as well where you can at the same time. But I think it's not one over the other. You really need to keep both happening because students will need access to both. Especially at that grade-level level, they will need that morphology as well.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. Where do we find information about etymology?
Elaine Stanley:
My go-to is Etymology Online [https://www.etymonline.com], which is a great resource, and you can look up any words you'd like and find out the history and the origin of the word and it breaks it down, gives you lots of information. That's a great go-to.
I think once you start working in this way and thinking about morphology, thinking about words in this way of why they are the way they are and all the parts that make them up and students do too, it becomes a really common thing that you go and investigate new words and find out information about words, and students will do that too.
They can use Etymology Online as well, but they often start to go away and Google things and come back and tell you, and it becomes regular a conversation you have. It is something you find just starts to happen more regularly in your classroom. But that's a great resource to help with that. I've put that one in our handout as well because that's so useful to people.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q. For anyone who may not be sure, could you explain what you mean about etymology a little bit further?
Elaine Stanley:
Yes. Etymology is really the origin of words and the history of words. The origin of words being thinking about how they entered the language, so in this case we're talking about English. And the way they've entered the language is often really interesting because it's all linked to the history of what happened in England over time. We've got words in English that have come from all different languages. We've got Greek words, German words, Latin, French, and it's all related to different periods in history.
For example, we talked about in our live session about a lot of French words came into English after the Norman invasion. It's all related to different periods in history and things that happened. That's really interesting and that's another reason students love it.
But it's also about the history of words and how their meanings have changed over time as well. And that's really interesting too, when you look back at words and think in those distant, past times, a word might've had a different meaning and it's morphed through time to mean something a little bit different now. Again, it's really interesting. That's where you grab students as well and pique their interest.
Kerrie Shanahan:
That's right, Elaine. And as you mentioned in our previous webinar about how that helps with the spelling options too for students. As they get a bit older, of course, and they're investigating the etymology, it really helps in both those areas, doesn't it?
Elaine Stanley:
That's right.