Lesson Plan
Understanding Prefixes: Dia- and Per-
Show students how knowledge of prefixes can help them determine word meaning. This lesson reviews the prefixes dia- and per- and gives students opportunities to think about how a word’s meaning is related to the prefix.
Grade:
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Learning Objectives
Students will learn the meaning of the prefixes dia- and per- and use them to help determine the meaning of unknown words.
Introduction
(5 minutes)- Write the imaginary words on the board: predance, redance, antidance.
- Ask students what they notice about the three words. What do they have in common? How are they different? They should notice that all three words have the root “dance” and common prefixes.
- Have students guess what these words would mean if they were real words.
- Explain that they just used one of the best strategies to understand the meaning of unknown words: Break the word into parts and use meanings of any word parts to give you clues as to the meaning of the word.
- Tell students that they are going to learn two new prefixes today that will help them apply this strategy to new words.