5 Ways to Teach Suffix Spelling Rules or Any New Concept

If you’re a teacher, and since you’re reading my blog, I’m assuming there’s a pretty good chance you are, you teach new concepts…all…of…the…time. Some of them are easy. Others are just plain complicated, like suffix spelling rules.

It’s those tricky concepts that make you reach deep into your toolbox to help your students as they tackle new material. Here are 5 ideas for teaching new concepts you can add to your toolbox.

1. Get Visual: Suffix Rules Anchor Chart

Kids are visual creatures. Having visuals up in the classroom is an essential support for many students, particularly when the material is new or complicated. Anchor charts, posters, visual supports, etc., help support students while they memorize and master new concepts. While visual supports benefit all students, they can be particularly essential for struggling learners.

When we started learning about the different rules for spelling words with suffixes, I created an anchor chart because remembering all of the spelling rules and applying them was just too overwhelming. The anchor chart makes it easy to reference the rules and summarizes the main concepts of the lesson.

2. Be Interactive: Sort the Suffixes

Visual support is important, but it is not enough by itself. Students need opportunities to interact with the material. The person doing the most work is the one learning the most. If we don’t let our kids work with the material, we are limiting their learning.

One of the interactive activities we did while learning about suffixes was a suffix sort. We talked about what a suffix is. We discussed how suffixes are classified as consonant and vowel suffixes. Then, we sorted them. You can see my daughter sorting them on our anchor chart. I had her create this part of the anchor chart to help give her ownership.

3. Add Movement: Get Your Kids Up

Another way to engage students is to add movement. Let’s face it. Sitting still all day is hard. Even adults need breaks at conferences and in-service meetings. Kids need even more opportunities to move.

One way to incorporate movement is to do graffiti activities. I gave my daughter a handful of base words and suffixes to sort and write on each rule poster. Instead of having her sort them on a worksheet, I spread out the rule posters and had her walk around to find the appropriate posters for each word. She really liked the activity and was excited to do it. Using erasable markers made it extra fun too!

4. Include a Review: A Suffix Rule Flipbook

It takes a lot of repetition to master complicated skills. It’s not enough to cover it once and move on. Kids deserve more than a single hit-or-miss lesson.

Building in opportunities for review lets kids who were absent, or who might have been physically present but mentally absent, get the content too.

We made a flipbook with each of the suffix spelling rules as a review.  I included each of the rules behind the flaps. She added examples on the back of each flap using the rules to help. This offered practice and provided a review, but the rules were right there, so it was definitely still scaffolded.

5. Let Them Do It: Apply the Rules

Before a skill is truly mastered, a student needs to be able to do it independently.

We closed the flipbook and did some dictation in our spelling notebook without the extra support of the flipbook. The fact she was able to correctly spell words with suffixes without looking at the rules was what showed me that she was catching on.

We’re continuing to work through mastering all of the suffix spelling rules, and hopefully, I’ll see them being applied in writing too!

Get the FREE suffix printables from this post

You can download ALL of the free printables from this post, including the anchor chart pieces, rules poster, sorts, and the flipbook, right here.

More spelling and grammar activities

• Read about three exciting hook activities for introducing adjectives.
• Read about teaching adjectives through art and poetry.
• Find ideas for moving beyond spelling drill boredom.
• Get a free dictionary skills sheet.

Check out my go-to resources for teaching spelling and grammar

• Spelling Activities for Any List
• Editable Sight Word Worksheets
• Write the Room
• What are Nouns?
• Singular and Plural Nouns
• Common and Proper Nouns
• Possessive Nouns
• Concrete and Abstract Nouns
• Adjectives & Adverbs 
• Comparative & Superlative Adjectives