Vocabulary (cue the scary music) – In middle school and the upper elementary grades, it’s one of those topics that never goes away.  Year after year, teachers teach story vocabulary, content vocabulary, affixes, roots, word connotations, and more.

Why?  Because it’s so needed!  Vocabulary infuses everything we teach in language arts (not to mention other content and skill subjects as well!)

In other words, vocabulary is one of those curriculum areas that is both essential and challenging!  Teachers pull out all the stops to spark students interest and to sneak in more practice with topics such as prefixes and suffixes.

It doesn’t have to be a brand new idea either.  Anything that kids consider fun works –  think puzzles, art activities, or really anything interactive such as a simple board game.  The trick is to work in plenty of language practice along with the fun.   The other important point, I think, is to have activities like these ready to go in advance so when it seems like a good point to include this type of practice, the activity is ready – just add it into the lesson plan.

Here’s one example of a prefix board game. I made it with two sets of question cards for plenty of practice – kids must answer one question correctly before moving, and then there are bonus cards for when they land on certain spaces.

This is another example, also a prefix activity. This one is a cut-and-paste project for ordering metric prefixes.  (A bonus  – there seems to be something about gluing their answers down that makes kids just a little bit more careful with their work!)

The activity sheet pictured below uses color coding.  With a random design, it’s made for older kids because they can’t just color it all in as soon as  they know what the picture is.

All of these activities are from my collection Foldables, Games, and Fun Activities with Prefixes.  I’ve just finished sets for suffixes and Latin and Greek roots as well, and I’ll show you some of the activities in a future post.  If your class tries the activities or if you have a suggestion for a good addition to one of the sets, leave a comment!

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