Spelling - Home learning - Suffixes

Understanding suffixes is an essential component of English grammar, as they can change the form and meaning of root words. In this home learning task, students are encouraged to expand their vocabulary by adding the suffixes '-er' and '-est' to root adjectives, thus forming comparative and superlative forms. For example, with the root word 'short', one might say, "My pencil is shorter than yours," and "Of all the pencils on the table, mine is the shortest." With 'fast', a possible sentence could be, "During the race, Sarah was faster than all the other runners," and "Out of everyone in the competition, Sarah was the fastest."

When dealing with the adjective 'slow', students can construct sentences like, "The traffic moved slower than usual this morning," and "This snail is the slowest creature in the garden." For the word 'sharp', sentences might read, "The chef's new knife is sharper than the old one," and "This blade is the sharpest in the entire kitchen." Through this exercise, learners get to practice and understand how suffixes modify root words to indicate different degrees of comparison, which is a valuable skill for effective communication.