Breaking Down Words to Build Meaning: Morphology, Vocabulary, and Reading Comprehension in the Urban Classroom

Recent research supports what many teachers already know—that students with a developed understanding that words are combinations of meaningful parts tend to have better vocabularies and stronger reading comprehension performance. These meaningful parts are called morphemes, and the study of them is called morphology. Teaching students to understand morphology could improve their reading comprehension, particularly for English‐language learners (ELLs) and their classmates in urban schools. This article reports on recent findings on this topic and suggests principles for teachers to use when integrating the teaching of morphology with literacy instruction.