Title – Suffix and Prefix Dice

By – N. Lindsay-Jones

Primary Subject – Language Arts

Grade Level – 3-6

Background:

I was consistently finding that although my students (I work with students identified as “need intervention services”) were able to spell fairly well, they really appeared to struggle with spelling when the words had either: a suffix, a prefix, or both. They were making mistakes on words that, in a given writing assignment, they had spelled correctly as a base word, but made mistakes when they needed to alter the tense etc. One suffix that seemed to trip them up consistently was -ed. I recognize that this may be in part to how different words’ pronunciation changes when an -ed is added, but I created this lesson nevertheless…

Supplies:

• 2 wooden cubes, or dice, preferable each in different colors
  
• 12 round stickers
  
• Dry erase boards (optional)
  
• Dry erase markers (optional)

Prep Work:

• Choose six suffixes your students seem to struggling with and write each one on a sticker and then stick those stickers on a die/wooden cube.
• Repeat the same step with prefixes on the other die/wooden cube.

Directions:

• Make a list of words that your students commonly misspell when adding prefixes and suffixes (these should be words that your students are able to read) and put the list on chart paper.
• Provide each student with a dry erase board and marker.
• Then, have a student roll the dice and come up to the chart paper and pick a base word that he/she can add either the suffix he/she rolled to, or the prefix he/she rolled to, or preferably a base word that he/she can add both the suffix and prefix he/she rolled to!
• While this student is up at the board the students at their desks can be doing this on their dry erase boards while you float around the room to monitor how they are doing.
• The student at the board will then read his/her word aloud. If you want, you can also ask a different child to identify the part of speech of the base word and then the new word that was created by adding either: prefix, suffix, or both.

Conclusion:

Teams and some sort of point system could also be created, where more points are given for using the prefix and suffix etc.

E-Mail

N. Lindsay-Jones

!