Year 3 identifying word families worksheet and PowerPoint

Word families

Words that share the same root word belong to a word family. The meaning stays linked: happy, unhappy, happiness.

Examples

• Care: careful, careless, carefully
• Act: action, actor, active

Key words

root word

the main part of a word

prefix

letters added to the start of a word

suffix

letters added to the end of a word

word family

words that share a root

What is on the worksheet

Every sheet for this lesson has a short teaching box and 12 questions that get gradually harder: 8 fluency questions, then 4 reasoning questions that ask pupils to explain or choose. A writing challenge follows. The questions use the same styles as the key stage 2 grammar and punctuation test (circle, underline, tick, fill the gap, add punctuation, rewrite, explain). They are written for this website, not copied from past papers.

All the answers are on the last page of the same editable Word file. New questions are made every time, so you can print a different sheet for every group or for homework. The same sheet code always gives the same sheet.

Writing challenge: Choose a root word such as play or friend. Write as many words from its family as you can.

Pupil target: I can find the words in a word family.

The PowerPoint

A 20-slide lesson deck for the same lesson: a starter that revisits earlier learning, key words, an I do and a You do question on each slide with a countdown timer, answers that appear one click at a time, and a challenge. Download the identifying word families PowerPoint.

Where this lesson fits

This is lesson 42 of 53 in the Year 3 SPaG scheme, in the block “Prefixes and word families”.

Other lessons in this block

• Root words, prefixes and suffixes
• What is a prefix? (un-)
• Adding super-, anti- and auto-
• Adding sub- and inter-
• Prefixes together

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