Older struggling readers often do not have good strategies for deconstructing a word when they come to a word they do not recognize. Helping students understand prefixes, suffixes and affixes helps students become more “word aware” as they are reading. Explicitly teach them how to spot smaller words within more complex words and draw a line to break the word into smaller more recognizable parts. Model thinking aloud about the meaning of the smaller word parts for students so that they hear how a good reader goes about analyzing the probable meaning of a word they see in context. The more students practice this behavior, the more able readers they will become.