Evaluation for 5.2a
Materials include explicit (direct) instruction on using morphemic analysis to determine word meaning in alignment with grade-level TEKS as appropriate for the program's stated purpose.
The materials explicitly teach students to use morphemic analysis to determine word meaning in alignment with grade-level TEKS. Through lessons such as “Determine the Meaning of Words with Prefixes and Suffixes,” the materials introduce increasingly complex affixes including
anti-,
inter-,
-tion, and
-able, and teach students how each morpheme contributes to a word’s meaning. The “Learn with an Example” section explains, “A suffix can be added to the end of a word. It changes the meaning of the word,” before teaching students that “the suffix
-ment means the action or result of.” Students immediately apply this instruction by analyzing words such as
anti-social, combining the prefix
anti- (“against”) with the base word
social to determine that the word means “against social interaction.” This explicit instruction teaches students to use word structure rather than relying solely on context clues to determine meaning.
The materials continue this explicit instruction throughout the Prefixes and Suffixes and Greek and Latin Roots strands. Lessons such as “Words with
pre-” and “Sort Words with Shared Prefixes and Suffixes by Meaning” introduce key morphological concepts, model how to analyze word parts, and demonstrate how to determine word meaning using morphemes. The materials explicitly teach that “a root is a part of a word that has a certain meaning. Words that share the same root often have similar meanings that are related to the meaning of the root” before modeling how students can determine the meaning of unfamiliar words. For example, students analyze the word
interaction by identifying
inter-, meaning “between,” and
-action, meaning “the process of doing,” helping them determine that
interaction refers to communication between people or things. The materials also teach students to recognize recurring morphological patterns, explaining, “Words with suffixes follow patterns. Noticing these patterns can help you recognize words that act the same way and help you figure out their meanings,” before students apply those patterns in word analogies and sorting activities.
The materials reinforce morphemic analysis through instructional videos, worked examples, and guided practice that model how prefixes, suffixes, and roots combine to create word meaning. Students examine how shared morphemes influence the meanings of related words by comparing examples such as
submarine,
submerge, and
substandard to understand how the prefix
sub- (“under” or “below”) shapes meaning across different contexts. The grade 5 skills plan systematically develops students’ morphological knowledge through instruction on prefixes (
pre-,
re-,
sub-,
mis-), suffixes (
-ful,
-less,
-able), Greek and Latin roots, and word pattern analogies, equipping students with increasingly sophisticated strategies for determining the meanings of unfamiliar words through morphemic analysis.