A Fun Way to Practice and Review Roots and Affixes

So I have a confession to make: I never enjoyed teaching roots and affixes. The workbooks and worksheets available for such lessons were torture for me and the students. Foldables were not as engaging as they were with other concepts. Even the educational board game I tried to use in class was too difficult for my students. And I was just plain bad at teaching this aspect of word work.

That being said, I know how crucial it is for children's vocabulary development and reading comprehension skills to practice roots and affixes. It is a vital part of vocabulary instruction. So this summer, while playing around with some vocabulary card game ideas, I came up with one for roots and affixes. The game is played similarly to UNO, sans colors and numbers. Players are dealt seven cards each, and the rest of the deck is placed face-down in the center, with one card turned face-up in a discard pile to begin the game. The first player begins by playing off of the word part shown on the starting card. If the starting card says trans, and the first player has a card that says port, he can play that card to make transport. Now the next person must play off of port. Or he can play off of transport. The first person to get rid of all of his or her cards wins the game.

Here are just some of the cards included in the 96-card set.

Now, in my new position as an ELA strategist, I am not in the classroom to test this game out on kids. But today, I presented the card game to a group of middle- and high-school ELA teachers, and I was blown away by how well it was received. Here are some pictures of my district's teachers playing the game:

As I watched teachers play this game, I saw such engagement, heard much laughter, and saw spirited competition. The group in the last photo improvised a new way to play, making it more like dominoes than UNO. I could see that everyone in the room was having a blast with this game, but I wanted to know two important things: Would students enjoy the game, and would they learn from it? The answer to both questions was a resounding yes from the 30 or so teachers who participated in this workshop, and they all wanted to take this resource to use in their classrooms.

So, have I found a fun way to practice and review roots and affixes? I think so. You can purchase this game from my TPT store by clicking on the product cover below.

The game is called Word War I, and I intend to make a second version called -- you guessed it -- Word War II.