ABSTRACT
Working with suffixes teaches pupils to process words right to the end. In reading, if pupils are rewarded for guessing or ‘having a go’ at difficult
words by way of initial letters, looking at illustrations or using contextual cues, they run the risk of forming habits in place of processing each word from start to finish. This leads at first to an illusion of fluency, but actually it is a game of roulette, the odds becoming less advantageous as words become longer and less familiar
A really helpful exercise, then, would be to teach the building blocks of words and say, ‘read what is there’. The Suffix Generator teaches a great deal of those building blocks that can otherwise be, in isolation, confounding.
