Suffix, Suffix: Read All About It!

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

Before getting started, let's quickly remind ourselves of what we already know:

• Words have meaning.
• By changing a word slightly, the meaning of a word can change.
• Prefixes go at the beginning of words (before the base/root) to change the meaning of the word.

Let's check out our prefix chart from the first Related Lesson in this series to remind us of some common prefixes:

If you missed this lesson or need a review, you can find it in the right-hand sidebar.

In this lesson, you will learn what suffixes are, some examples of suffixes, and how they can be added to a word to change its meaning.

This will then help you figure out new words and what they mean when you are reading and working with words every day.

Let's think about a base or root word first. Remember, that is the main part of the word. I think of it as the root or the base of the tree.

Just like the tree NEEDS that root or trunk, and it holds the tree up, a word NEEDS the root or base word. The root or base word holds meaning by itself.

Some examples of base words are: write, do, play, and comfortable. Those words mean something all by themselves.

A suffix is when another part of a word, that has its own meaning, is added to the root or base word. It is added to the ending of the word.

For the most part, suffixes can't be words by themselves. They must be attached to the root or base word. I think of a suffix as a leaf on the tree.

The leaf doesn't HAVE to be there, but it can be there; and when it is there, it can only go with the root or base (after it). The suffix doesn't HAVE to be on a word, but it can be there; and when it is there, it can only go with the root or base word (after it).

Prefixes go before the base word, and suffixes go after. A word can have a prefix and no suffix, a suffix and no prefix, neither a prefix nor a suffix, or a prefix AND a suffix!

The tree chart we started in the prefix lesson might help us to visualize this better:

If You Were a Suffix, by Marcie Aboff, might help explain it in a different way. Watch this If you were a Suffix by Marcie Aboff with introduction read-along from Ms. Lydia Reads:

Let's look at an example!

We have the word wonder, which means that you are curious about wanting to know more about something. Now, if we add the suffix -ful to it, we get wonderful. Wonderful now means that something is full of wonder or has lots of wonder.

So, -ful means "full of," and when we add it to words such as beauty (beautiful), care (careful), help (helpful), or play (playful), we add the meaning "full of" to the word, which makes the meaning of the word slightly different than what it was before.

With the suffix added, it can be used in a different way. Notice that adding this suffix sometimes even changes the spelling of the word!

Let me show you one more.

We have the suffix -ing. Here are some words that often have the suffix -ing at the ending of them: thinking, reading, running, talking.

-Ing means an action or in the process of doing it, so I want to think about what each of these words means before the suffix is added and once the suffix is added.

• Did you see how all the meanings with the suffix had the action happening right then in that moment due to the suffix -ing?

You wouldn't say, "Right now I am think." You would say, "Right now I am thinking."

That's just one more example of a suffix. We sure do use the -ing suffix a lot!

How ready are you for the Got It? section?

We'll work together to practice some more!