Morphing Around – Understanding how words work
Our focus root words for this week are holiday and vacation.
Our holidays are over, and it is back to school for a new school year. Another word for a holiday is a vacation. It is often used in America, as well as other countries. Both the words holiday and vacation are built from morpheme building blocks (units of meaning).
Let’s look at the morphemes (building blocks) in each word.
holi + day = holiday holi – holy; day – day
vac + ate + ion = vacation vac = empty; ate = possess a certain quality; ion = act or state
So, a vacation is the state of something being empty. (empty of work/school)
holi means holy. It was first used in the 1500s. Over the years the y has been changed to an i because something is going to be added to it. People only had extra rest days on holy days such as Sundays, Christmas, and Easter. Over the years the two words merged into one and became holiday.
The word vacation also means holiday but is used more in America.
Now let’s try to build some words connected to holiday and vacation. You will not be able to use every prefix or suffix with every root.
Write a word sum for each of the words you have created using the prefixes, root words and suffixes. E.g. e + vac + u + at + ion = evacuation
To use this as a spelling strategy each day of the week, see the weekly plan.
How to use Pick and Mix each day for a week.
Here are some words that can be created from this matrix. It is important that the children make sure that they are not creating new words and know how to use them in context.
| holiday holidays holidayed holidaying preholiday postholiday (or post-holiday) vacate vacation vacating vacated prevacation postvacation evacuate evacuation evacuating evacuated locate location locating located relocate relocation relocating relocated |
For more word explorations, click here