In addition to addressing essential curriculum, today's content-area teachers are encouraged to emphasize literacy skills that are tailored to their respective disciplines (Houseal, Gillis, Helmsing, & Hutchison, 2016) as a means of developing students' abilities to read, write, and speak as disciplinary apprentices (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012). Word learning is a fundamental component of this new emphasis. Word learning is critical as adolescents are expected to "grow their vocabularies through a mix of conversations, direct instruction, and reading" and "determine word meanings, appreciate the nuances of words, and steadily expand their repertoire of words and phrases" (National Governors Association Center & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010, "Regular Practice With Complex Texts" section, para. 2). A promising word learning approach that can be tailored to any content area is morphological instruction

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Adolescents often learn science vocabulary through reading. This vocabulary is frequently characterized by multisyllabic words derived from Greek and Latin roots. While most adolescents have acquired the decoding skills to read these multisyllabic words, many students, particularly those with disabilities, cannot engage in independent word learning because they lack the skills to decode these multisyllabic words. Graphomorphemic elements of words, including affixes, support effective decoding and can eventually support word learning. This article describes an approach used to identify the most frequently occurring, stable affixes within science words so that they could be used in "big word" decoding instruction. To illustrate the approach, a subset of high frequency science words and a list of high utility, stable affixes are provided.

This study investigated the feasibility of multicomponent linguistic awareness intervention on early literacy skills in at-risk kindergarteners. Seventeen students, including native Spanish-speaking English language learners (n = 10) and native English speakers (n = 7), participated in a 6-week small-group therapy program, for a total of 12 intervention hours. Students received therapy in one of the following: phonological awareness and letter knowledge; morphological awareness; or a three-pronged intervention that addressed all three areas. Students demonstrated moderate to large gains in word reading (d = 1.79-2.19), phonological awareness (d = 0.73-1.59), morphological awareness (d = 0.57-3.96), and morphological spelling (d = 0.77-3.0). Analyses revealed no significant differences based on the type of intervention received. These results provide preliminary evidence for the feasibility of three-pronged linguistic awareness instruction for kindergarten students at risk for later reading difficulties, including English language learners, in intensive intervention programs.

The teaching approach described in this article was originally designed for kindergarten students who are at risk for reading disorders. In a 30‐minute session, students practiced attending to and identifying the spelling patterns, pronunciations, and meanings of common morphological suffixes through listening activities, interactive book reading, and word sorts. A sample of kindergarten students with low early reading skills who received this intervention made large treatment gains in word reading, morphological awareness, and spelling after 12 hours of total instruction. These small‐group activities can be incorporated into teachers’ existing literacy instruction or provided as part of intensive intervention for at‐risk students. A list of books appropriate for targeting five common suffixes is provided.