Root Words, Prefixes & Suffixes Collection

This collection for prefix practice, suffix practice and root word practice is designed to fit into your second or third grade classroom.

Black old empty chalkboard for copy space with colorful pieces of chalk

This is another free resource for teachers and homeschool families from The Curriculum Corner.

Help organize your prefix practice, suffix practice and root word practice in the classroom with the help of these free resources.

This collection of resources will help you build your students’ word part skills in your classroom (root word, suffix, prefix focus).

This assortment includes a variety of options for you to teach your students about root words, prefixes and suffixes.

Our materials will fit into your second grade and third grade word work.

There are three different downloads available.

This resource has been newly updated to include versions that can be printed without the colorful backgrounds in order to help you save ink.

Teaching about Root Words, Suffixes & Prefixes

The first resource is a PowerPoint presentation you can use to introduce root words, suffixes and prefixes.

You will find definitions as well as examples and a few interactive class brainstorming slides.

To use: Save and open this PowerPoint file.

You can then select “reading view” so that the PowerPoint will display correctly on your interactive white board.

To transition between slides, simply click on each slide.

You will be unable to make changes to the background but you will be able to change the wording to fit your needs.

Printables for Root Words, Suffixes & Prefixes

The second resource is our printable collection.

You will find a variety of assessment, practice and center activities. These will help students understand and practice their understanding of root words, prefixes and suffixes.

First, you will find anchor charts for prefixes and suffixes. There are two. One contains four common prefixes along with meanings. The second contains four common suffixes along with meanings.

The printables have “I Can” standards for classroom display. We have included the statements that match 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade standards.

The assessment pieces within the printables can be pre and/ or post assessments in your classroom.

There are charts for students that can be added to reading or word work notebooks. We have included versions that are completed. Others are meant for students to fill out.

“Show the Word”  pages ask your students to draw the meanings of words containing prefixes or suffixes.

A second version first asks students to create a word by adding a suffix or a prefix to a root word and then to illustrate the word.

The first center set we have provided is on a polka-dot background. This set of cards includes words with prefixes and suffixes along with their definitions. You  might include all of the cards or only the prefix or suffix cards depending on your classroom focus. Students can match each word with the definition.

The second prefix and suffix center set is on a striped background. To prepare this center, print and laminate these two striped pages. Next, laminate and cut apart the paint splat cards. The student’s task is to place the word card on the matching sentence on the striped boards.

PowerPoint Game for Root Words, Prefixes & Suffixes

Set up this PowerPoint presentation on your student computers for morning practice or during literacy centers.  This is also a good option to use if you have a smart board in your classroom as a whole group discussion activity.

To play, students click on the words in the title slide (first slide) and they will be taken to the first question. If they answer the question is, students will receive a slide giving them praise.  They then click on the wording and will go to the next question. (Students must click on the actual text for the slides to correctly work.)

When students answer a question incorrectly, they will reach some type of “Try Again” slide. They will need to click on those words to be taken back to the original question for another chance.

The final slide will return to the first slide.

Click on the following links to reach the three resources described above

Instructional PowerPoint Presentation

Student Practice PowerPoint Game

The font used on the PowerPoints is KG Miss Kindergarten.  You will need this font downloaded on your computer.

You might also like these free resources designed for intermediate students:

Thank you to PrettyGrafik Design on etsy for the cute background papers.

As with all of our resources, The Curriculum Corner creates these for free classroom use. Our products may not be sold. You may print and copy for your personal classroom use. These are also great for home school families!

You may not modify and resell in any form. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Free root word tree and more! Over eighty percent of the words in the English language contain a root word. The origin of the root word may be Greek, Latin, Old English, Anglo-Saxon, or even Proto-Indo-European! A Word Tree is a tree-shaped graphic organizer to help students understand root words and the words they generate. Using a root word tree, students discover that prefixes, roots, and suffixes combine to create meaning. A root word tree is one of my favorite ways to teach word origins. Below, you’ll find links to a free root word tree and other freebies for teaching root words in your classroom. Click the images to get the freebie.

Free Intro to Greek and Latin Roots Interactive Notebook

This free interactive notebook activity answers two questions about Greek and Latin roots.

It’s a color, cut, and glue activity. It can be used with any curriculum on Greek and Latin roots. I use it with my Greek and Latin roots interactive notebook.

Free Root Word Tree

There’s also a cool video introduction to Greek and Latin roots on YouTube. I show the video when every student has completed the interactive notebook.

For something more advanced, All About Learning Press has a free word-builder root word tree. It’s fun!

Free Greek and Latin Roots Flash Cards

These visual flash cards are the backbone of my Greek and Latin roots mnemonic unit. I love them because they are engaging, easy-to-use, and big enough to use with the entire class at the same time. They work with PowerPoint

Free Word Wall Cards

A set of ten word wall cards that illustrate and define ten numeric Greek and Latin roots.

Free Etymology Scavenger Hunt

Provided in editable form, in case you need to customize it to work with the dictionaries in your classroom.

Learning root words is an effective strategy that can magically open up the mind to comprehend multiple words in many other languages besides English. Our root word worksheets exploit this strategy quite comprehensively to help children of grade 1 through grade 6, gain the most out of it. Using lucid definitions, charts, word-search grids, word challenges, Greek and Latin roots and many more diversified exercises, our pdf worksheets nourish the roots well enough for the vocabulary tree to stand strong and grow rapidly. Walk through some of these worksheets for free!

What is the Root Word?

Teach children of grade 2 through grade 5, how to break down large, new or unfamiliar words into its most basic unit to discover the root word that carries meaning with this root word worksheet.

Adding Suffixes to Verb Roots

Children of grade 4 and grade 5 will gain a considerable level of familiarity with verbs as root words and changing their forms or patterns to singular, past or progressive by adding the suffixes -s, -ed and -ing.

Root Words and Affixes Chart

Underline the Affix

Familiarize children of elementary school with root words and affixes with this exercise of identifying prefixes and suffixes to unlock the root word. This will help them significantly in retaining the word.

Identify Words with Affixes

Notice the forms and patterns of words in this pdf worksheet, to gain knowledge of how components like roots, prefixes or suffixes influence grammar, spelling and meaning of words in English.

Root Words Search

Let 2nd grade and 3rd grade kids locate the hidden words in their most basic forms, using clues in this exciting word search activity. They will learn to think systematically about word-formation and changing forms with affixes.

New Words with New Roots

Expand the pool of words that children know by engaging them in this root word worksheet for coloring and creating new words from the given roots. This will certainly build their repertoire of functional words.

Latin and Greek Roots Match

Since most root words in English come from the Greek or Latin language, it is imperative for kids to familiarize themselves with these to open up their understanding. Our printable worksheet exploits it to the fullest.

Form New Words with Affixes

The strategy of using the root word as a scaffold to build new words practiced in this pdf worksheet, will immensely help students in expanding their vocabulary, using a variety of affix combinations.

Roots and Affixes

Enjoy the process of learning root words and affixes with this cut and glue activity that will magically help children to understand meanings and look for familiar affixes that go with the base words.

Make the most of this creative root words and affixes worksheet to put down the roots of learning vocabulary firmly, and affix them with a better comprehension of their meanings, forms and patterns.

Define the Roots

Now here comes a super engaging printable for 5th grade and 6th grade children with a built-in testing aspect. This will help equip them better to handle unfamiliar words and make sensible guesses of their meanings.

Use this quiz printable as an effective practice to review the learning of root words and affixes in word formation, or to improve students’ understanding of this efficient vocabulary enhancement strategy.

Split the Words

Understand multiple words, form new words, decipher unfamiliar words, figure out their meanings, and expand vocabulary all with our root words, prefixes and suffixes exercise worksheet pdf.

Complete the sentence using affixes

Enhance the comprehension of students in adding appropriate affixes to the root words to suit the context of the sentence. This will greatly help them in using contextual clues to form meaningful words.

What is a Morpheme?

A morpheme is the minimal grammatical unit within a language. Every word comprises one or more morphemes. A standalone morpheme and a word are identical but when a root word becomes modify with addition of affixes, it becomes word only.

Look at the examples:

Listen, listener, listened, listening

The root is listen is stand alone morpheme and a word at a same time.  When root word was modifies with affixes like -s, -er, -ed and –ing it became a word consisting of two morpheme in each word.

Types of Morpheme

There are two main types of morphemes

The morpheme that can stand alone as a single word (as a meaningful unit) is called free morpheme. The free morphemes are roots that are identical to words. Free morpheme are set of separate English word forms such as basic nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. When a free morpheme is used with bound morphemes, the basic word forms are technically known as stems or roots.

Examples of free morphemes:

Sun (noun), dog (noun), walk (verb), and happy (adjective)

Free morpheme can stand alone and cannot be subdivided further. ‘Sun’ or ‘dog’ are ‘free morphemes because they cannot be further split up, therefore the stems that cannot divide further are also called roots.

Free morphemes are divided into two categories: Lexical morphemes and functional morphemes.

are set of content words like nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. They can be understood fully e.g. run, blue, slow, paper, small, throw, and now. Lexical morphemes depict dictionary meaning of a word that is attributed to a specific referent.

are set of functional words like conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, modals and quantifiers. Some examples of functional morphemes are and, near, when, on, because, but, it, in, that, the, and above.  Functional morphemes perform as a relationship between one lexical morpheme and another. A functional morpheme modifies the meaning, rather than supplying the root meaning of the word. It encodes grammatical meaning e.g., the players entered the ground. In this sentence, ‘the’ is functional morpheme, which is specifying players and ground.

Segments that cannot stand alone and occurs with another root/stem are called Bound Morphemes. Bound morphemes are also called affixes (prefixes, suffixes and infixes) in English. Two bound morpheme cannot occur together but it is necessary for a bound morpheme to occur with a root/stem.

Examples of bound morphemes:

Opened: (Open + ed) = root + suffix

Reopen: (Re + open) = Prefix + root

Men: (Man + plural) = root + infix (infix makes a change inside a root word)

The set of affixes that make up the category of bound morphemes can also be divided into two types. Derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes

Derivational morphemes change the grammatical categories of words. For example the word ‘bake’ (verb) is a root word (free morpheme) and when we add bound morpheme ‘er’(a suffix)  with stem:  it becomes baker (a noun), So the grammatical category was changed from verb to noun.

An inflectional morpheme is a suffix that is added to a word to assign a particular grammatical property to that word. For example, liste +ing = listening or boy+s = boys. They do not change the essential meaning or the grammatical category of a word. Inflectional morphemes serve as grammatical markers that indicate tense, number, possession, or comparison.