Teacher Talk for...

Statements and Questions for Analyzing:

Students use the analyzing strategy to examine the structure of words.  Studying the morphemes of words allow students to acquire information about meaning, pronunciation, and part of speech of new words their prefixes, suffixes and roots.  These word parts help to contribute to the meaning of the word.

• Look at any part of the word that helps you to make sense of it.
• Try to cover up part of the word (e.g. the prefix). What word do you have left?
• Try to take the word apart.
• What words around it tell you something about the word?
• What does the prefix do when added to the start of the word?
• What words go together with this word?
• What is the root word?
• Which word has a prefix? suffix?
• What is the meaning of the prefix or suffix?
• If you know the meaning of the root word, then what do you think is the meaning of this word?
• How does knowing the prefix, suffix or root word help you to determine the meaning of a new word?
• How are these words alike? different?