Help your students understand root words.
Understanding root words is necessary to have a good grasp of the English language. Games are a great way to teach different concepts to children. It does not matter whether you are a teacher or a parent; you can use these games in the classroom or at home to reinforce and help elementary or middle school students memorize root words and their meanings.
Concentration
Use index cards to make up your own game of Concentration or Memory. Purchase blank index cards, but make sure they are the heavy type so that the child cannot see through the cards. Write a root word on one side of one card, such as "alter." On another card, write the meaning of that root word, which is "other." Do this until you have root words and meanings for about 20 words, which would give you 40 cards.
Shuffle the cards and set up the play area just as you would for Concentration, in neat rows with the cards facing down. Each child takes a turn flipping over two cards to see if they can find a root word and a meaning that match, such as "alter" and "other" as in the example. He keeps both cards if he finds a match. The player with the most matches wins. Collect the cards to use for the next game. See the Resource section for a link to a large list of roots and their meanings.
Find Your Partner
Use the same cards from Concentration to play this game. This game is better in the classroom where there are more students. Give each student one card, but they cannot look at it until you say "Go." The students then need to find their match. If they have a root word, they need to find the meaning, and vice versa. Do not allow talking during this time; they must know what they are looking for. At the end of the game each student should have a mate; however, you may find that one child has two mates and that means that someone was wrong. Check to make sure that each root word matches up with the meaning.
Build a Word
Create as many root, prefix and suffix cards as you can think of. The more you have, the better, but aim for at least 90. Shuffle and hand out five cards to each player. Put the remainder of the deck face down in the middle of the play area. Take the top card and turn it face up. The players then add root words, prefixes or suffixes to make new words. For instance, the word dent is a root word that means tooth; add the suffix "ist" to get dentist. If a player cannot make a new word with the cards in her hand, she must pick a card from the deck. If she can play it, fine; if not, she must wait until her next turn. The first player to run out of cards wins.
Tags: root word, root words, cards make, each student, have root, index cards