Eggs & Paint Chips

Topic: Suffixes.

I love creating manipulatives and fun visuals to use for my lessons. When I introduced the idea of suffixes, I used a picture of Slinky Dog from Toy Story, because he has three very distinct parts, just like words that contain prefixes and suffixes!

After explaining the definitions of the suffixes -ment, -ness, and -ful, I engaged the class in a word sorting activity. I held up word cards,and the students had to tell me which category it went in and what their reasoning was for placing it there. They also had to break apart the word into its root word and suffix in order to determine its meaning. 

Once we completed this task as a class, I explained to the students that they were going on a "Suffix Hunt!" After creating paint chip and plastic egg manipulatives in small bags (one for each student), I gave the direction that students needed to put the endings on the root words in order to make a word. They also had to figure out the meaning of the word they created, and record it on a piece of paper. 

Here are the eggs when they came out of the package.

These are the eggs when the activity is completed correctly.

It very interesting to see which students chose the work with the plastic eggs so that they could turn the suffix ending to see if it fit each word family; while others chose to work with the paint chips as if they were a detective's magnifying glass. (I love paint chips!)

Paint chips before the activity.
(Sorry for the low quality iPhone picture!)

Paint chips after the activity was completed.
(Sorry for the low quality iPhone picture!)

Click here for the lesson plan, which includes:

• Suffix Hunt Worksheet (Would need to be revamped for younger grades.)