Use this activity to get students active and promote an awareness of prefixes. Encourage children to stand up and tell provide them with a prefix, "re," for example. Print the prefix on the board and have students say it aloud with you. State different words that both contain and don't contain the given prefix. When children hear words that begin with the given prefix, encourage them to jump up. For instance, if you say the word "repeat" or rewind," students should jump up. Turn it into a competitive game by having having students who don't jump when they are supposed to and jump when they aren't sit out; the last student standing is the winner.
Teach your students about prefixes through song. This song is sung to the tune of "Jingle Bells."
"Anti-, de-, pre- and mis-
These are prefixes.
Be- and dis-
Non- and pro-
Are other prefixes, too."
(repeat song twice)
Print the prefixes on chart paper and as you sing the song, point to each of the words on the paper.
Promote an awareness of prefixes with a sorting activity. Print out a collection of prefixes on index cards; create five or six cards for each prefix. Review the sounds the prefixes make with students. Mix up the cards in a pile and encourage students to sort through the cards and place them in matching piles. After sorting the cards, try to think of one word for each of the given prefixes.
Create a prefix matching game for children to play. On two sets of index cards, write a collection of prefixes. Place one set of cards in a face-down pile and the scatter the other set, face-up, on the floor. One student at a time takes a card from the face-down pile and reads the prefix, then finds the matching card on the ground. If a student is unable to make a match, she passes her card to the next student. The student who makes the most matches wins the game.