Weekly Literacy Focus

Week Twelve

November 28th 2016

Root Words and Roots

Root Words

A root word is the main body of a word either in its own right or before affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are added.

This can often help with spelling. How many students spell ‘always’ with two Ls? If they knew the root word was ‘way’, the prefix ‘al’ (which doesn’t have two Ls) and the suffix ‘s’, a student would be less likely to make this spelling error. A similar idea with hope/ful.

There is also a root which isn’t its own word. Reject for instance is the prefix ‘re’ and Latin root ‘ject’.

Weekly Literacy Focus

Week Twelve

November 28th 2016

Root Words and Roots

Download a PDF of Latin Roots

Download a PDF of Greek Root Words

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/root-words-roots-and-affixes

http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/factsheet/en18root-e3-f-what-are-root-words

http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic/root-words (this one has a 1 minute video)

To see other activities click on a title

A lot is two words

Syllables

Short and long Vowels

Magic E

Plurals

Plurals ending in Y

i before e

Homophones 1

Homophones 2

it and it's

Phonics