Supporting Middle School English Language Learners Through Morphology Instruction

While working on my endorsement for English as a second language, I learned about cognates—words that share similar meanings, spellings, and pronunciations across two languages. Back then, I thought this was a cool concept. But it became much more relevant in recent years, as more students were coming into my classroom from outside the United States, and the school district was not providing any help in meeting these students’ needs besides asking me to put them on the computer to learn English. 

Using elementary-type programs to learn English was not what my middle school students needed or wanted. They wanted to be like their English-speaking peers, learning what they were learning. 

At the time, the majority of my students identified as either Native American or Hispanic, and we were working together in a Tier 1 rural school. Students were joining kindergarten behind in their vocabulary. When the students came to me in middle school, the vocabulary gap was no smaller. It may have even gotten bigger because as students advanced in school, they were exposed to larger words made of multisyllables. 

I needed a way to narrow the gap. That was when I was introduced to the movie Akeelah and the Bee. The line that “big words come from little words” resonated with me. I used the following approach to better support my students. 

Introducing Morphology

I introduced my middle school students to morphological instruction, the instruction of Greek and Latin roots using a systematic teaching approach. This instruction improves their morphological awareness, helping them understand how words are made up of meaningful components. 

Focused and intentional morphological instruction can improve students’ comprehension, word recognition, spelling, and writing skills. Academic sources that have helped me with instruction included Red Hot Root Words, Greek and Latin Roots, Building Vocabulary With Greek and Latin Roots, and Latin and Greek Roots: Teaching Vocabulary Using Hands-On Activities and Common Objects. These scholars’ books guided the process of identifying Greek and Latin roots and showcased instructional practices for me to use in the classroom.

What I found when I taught morphological vocabulary to all my students, but especially my English language learner (ELL) students, was that breaking words into parts helped students generate the meaning of unfamiliar words. This was especially true when I chose Greek and Latin roots that had English and Spanish cognates. For example, aud means “hear” and can be found in Spanish words such as auditorio and audicón. Another example is bio, or "relating to life," which can be found in the Spanish words biografia and biologia.

This exercise let my Spanish speakers use their first language to explore words in their new language. It empowered the ELL students to see that they knew more English than they realized, which in turn helped accelerate their English acquisition, especially in the content areas. Good sources for this included Colorín Colorado and Core Learning, which both provide lists that I used in my classroom. 

Flash card Activities

One of my students’ favorite activities for building Greek and Latin root cognates involved taking flash cards that I placed on sample paint chips from hardware and paint stores and quizzing each other in groups. 

One student held up the root while a group of three or four others guessed the definition. I like using paint chips because I can color-code the roots—blue hues equal math, green hues equal science, and so forth. Also, the paint chips are opaque and sturdy, so students can’t see the answer on the other side. 

Another way my students used these flash cards was to combine them to make random, silly words. They loved trying to pronounce the words they created, then having their peers guess the meanings.

Teaching Word Families

I've also found it advantageous to teach students about word families, the way math teachers teach fact families. I saw a student use this strategy firsthand on a state reading test. The article was about the brain, but instead of using the word brain, the test used the word cranium, along with cranial and other related words. The student was baffled at first but then remembered that he had learned cranio in class and was able to apply this to the word-family words in the article.

When teaching Greek and Latin roots, I stay away from the Frayer Model and other overused strategies, because by the time they get to middle school, students have seen them and done them. In addition to the books mentioned above, another book I’ve found helpful is Vocab Rehab, which provides strategies and activities that particularly engage middle school students.