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Morphological Awareness: Assessing a Crucial Skill for Literacy Success
Wednesday, October 14, 2026 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm EDT
Morphological Awareness: Assessing a Crucial Skill for Literacy Success
Presented by Kenn Apel, Ph.D., Experienced Educator, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of South Carolina; and Victoria S. Henbest, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Experienced Educator, Associate Professor, Speech-Language Pathology, Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, University of South Alabama
Sponsored by Brookes Publishing Co., Inc.
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Morphological awareness is the ability to consciously think about and manipulate the smallest units of meaning in spoken and written language—and it is a crucial skill for literacy success. This edWebinar gives educators and literacy professionals a practical foundation for understanding and assessing morphological awareness in students who are struggling with reading and spelling.
Morphological awareness involves understanding how words are built from meaningful parts, including base words (such as cat or cycle), prefixes (such as re-, pre-, and un-), and suffixes (such as -s, -ing, -ly, and -ment). For students experiencing literacy difficulties, weaknesses in morphological awareness may contribute to challenges with reading and spelling. As the importance of morphological awareness gains greater recognition, it is increasingly reflected in state literacy mandates and guidance, as well as in the revised definition of dyslexia. Understanding and assessing morphological awareness can help educators make more informed decisions about instruction and intervention for students who need additional support.
Presented by the leading experts on morphological awareness, this edWebinar explores what morphological awareness is—and what it is not—and introduce the morphological system involved in reading and spelling. Attendees will learn why morphological awareness matters for literacy development and how it can be assessed, with a focus on students who are struggling to acquire adequate literacy skills.
By the end of the session, viewers can:
- Define morphological awareness and distinguish it from related skills
- Describe its critical role in reading, spelling, and literacy development
- Discuss how morphological awareness can be assessed
- Consider how assessment results can inform support for students struggling to read and spell
This recorded edWebinar will be of interest to elementary teachers, reading specialists, speech-language pathologists, school psychologists, school leaders, and district leaders.
About the Presenters
Kenn Apel, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Formerly, he was Chair of that department. Dr. Apel has more than 35 years of experience conducting research in the areas of spoken and written language. His recent research focused on the linguistic factors that contribute to the development of reading and spelling, including morphological awareness and orthographic knowledge. Before retiring, he was the principal investigator of a three-year, $1.4M IES-sponsored grant (MATRS: Morphological Assessment for Reading and Spelling) to develop a morphological awareness assessment measure for students in the first through sixth grades. Dr. Apel is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. He also received the honors of that association.
Victoria S. Henbest, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is an American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Certified Speech-Language Pathologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology at the University of South Alabama. She teaches undergraduate introductory courses on language and speech disorders as well as the graduate-level school-age language and literacy and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) courses. Prior to entering academia, Dr. Henbest worked for five years as a full-time clinician in a public school with preschool-age children with a variety of communication disorders. Her primary research interests include emergent literacy, word-level reading and spelling, and the association between linguistic awareness and literacy development. She has published and presented on these topics at the state, national, and international levels. Dr. Henbest is co-author of a 2024 textbook on child language disorders entitled Language Disorders in Children: Fundamental Concepts of Assessment and Intervention, Third Edition (Plural Publishing, Inc).
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