Morphing Words

 

How well can your students morph words from one part of speech to another?  Give them a word and ask them to identify its part of speech.  Then have them transform it into other parts of speech.

Let's take cheer, for example.  What part of speech is it?  It can be a noun or a verb.

Now ask your student to make it into an adjective: cheerful.

How about a participle: cheering.

An adverb?  cheerily.

Do this for any words that pop into your mind. Here are some that popped into mine.

Retire (v)   
noun: retirement  
adjective: retired

Exhaustion (n)   
verb: exhaust  
adjective: exhausting

Celebrate (v)    
noun: celebration
adjective: celebrative, celebratory

Excite (v)  
noun: excitement   
adjective: excited, excitable

Intense (adj)   
adverb: intensely
noun: intenseness

Another idea is to let your students think of the words, morphing them in as many ways as possible.  Then ask them to check a source, such as www. dictionary.reference.com to see what others there may be. 

In addition to becoming more savvy with parts of speech, they will see the versatility of words and build their reservoir of vocabulary!