How Bug Club Morphology helped one teacher close the comprehension gap and get every student reading at or above grade level for the first time in her career
Reading Results So Significant They Looked Like a Mistake
Something unusual happened when Kristal Dunville submitted her Grade 3 reading assessment data at the end of Horizon School Division’s 2023–2024 school year.
“For the first time in my 12 years of teaching, every student was reading either at level or above grade level. I’ve never ever had that,” explains Dunville.
The growth was so significant that it drew the attention of division leaders, and Kristal got a call asking her to recheck her data entries.
“I said, ‘No, this is legit. My kids grew that much because they now understand what they’re reading.’”
One student, who had come to her reading well below grade level, grew 11 Fountas & Pinnell levels in a single year, more than twice the typical expectation for Grade 3.
A nonverbal student who started the year knowing only two words finished with over 150 words in his vocabulary, exceeding a divisional goal of 75. The following year, he began communicating in sentences and reading.
How did Dunville and her students get here? The answer is Bug Club Morphology Kits A and B, a structured morpheme program from Pearson that helps students in Grades 3 and 4 understand how words are built and what they mean.
Closing the Gap Between Decoding and Understanding
At the beginning of the 2023 school year, Dunville noticed that her Grade 3 students could sound out words but didn’t understand what they meant. Fluency wasn’t the issue. Comprehension was.
She knew morpheme instruction could help, but the resources she found were designed for younger learners. “A lot of things I was finding were really geared towards Grade 1 and Grade 2,” she says. “I didn’t want them to feel like babies.”
Her class also had a wide range of needs: students with autism, ADHD, and one student who was nonverbal, which meant any program had to be flexible, engaging, and manageable in short, focused lessons. She had tried other approaches and adapted resources from other programs. But her students weren’t connecting with them.
After searching online for morpheme programs for older students, Dunville came across Bug Club Morphology. She found a one-lesson sample, liked what she saw, and purchased Kit A with her own money. She started using it immediately and talking about it with her colleagues just as quickly.
Stories that Connect to the Saskatchewan Curriculum
What set Bug Club Morphology apart for Dunville wasn’t just the structure; it was the content. The program’s non-fiction stories are designed to connect across subject areas, and Dunville saw this play out in her classroom from the very first lesson.
“The sample lesson I did was the sunflower one, and we were actually learning about plants at the same time in science,” she recalls. “They were like, ‘Oh, that’s what we’re learning about right now in science!’”
The Métis structures lesson made a similar impression. Her school had launched a Michif program, and students had been seeing Red River cards around the building without knowing what they meant. “When we got to the Métis structures lesson, students made the connection, saying, ‘Oh, that’s those cards we see.’” The program helped them make curricular and cultural connections without requiring a separate lesson.
This cross-curricular reach also meant that even on days when Dunville didn’t get to science or social studies, Bug Club Morphology had already laid the groundwork. Students arrived at those subjects with vocabulary and context they hadn’t had before.
Flexible Enough for Every Learner
For the nonverbal autistic student in her class, Dunville adapted the program rather than setting it aside. She used the card’s visuals as a conversation anchor, starting with the single large image on the front and working through the interior pictures one at a time. The bright, uncluttered format caught his attention in a way that traditional picture books hadn’t. “He kind of looked at me and suddenly learned to say, ‘Hey, what’s that?’”
She also projects the digital version of Bug Club Morphology lessons onto her SMART Board for a student whose eye condition prevents vertical eye movement, so he can follow the lesson without having to look down at a card. Students who want to look at the board rather than the card in hand can do either.
The teacher card that accompanies each lesson also means the program can run consistently even when Dunville is away. “If I’m going to have a sub in the building, I can just leave the teacher card. My kids were able to continue and keep that consistency.”
A Five-Day Structure Built for Focus and Retention
Dunville built her implementation around a five-day weekly cycle, with 20 minutes of whole-class instruction each day. The short, focused format was intentional: her students needed lessons in smaller chunks to retain what they were learning.
- On Mondays, students receive the card and preview it together, looking at pictures, identifying the morpheme, and discussing what words they can see.
- Tuesdays are for close reading, with built-in partner sharing.
- On Wednesdays, students add the card to their Morpheme notebook and go on a “morpheme hunt,” searching books or online for other words that share the morpheme.
- Thursday’s writing connection gives students a chance to apply what they’ve learned.
- On Fridays, Dunville does a quick assessment: students write two sentences using the week’s morpheme, giving her insight into both comprehension and sentence structure.
An unexpected bonus: the format of the Bug Club Morphology student cards closely mirrors the format of the OCA assessments used in Horizon School Division, giving students regular, low-stakes practice with a familiar test structure.
“It’s such a great program, and it’s a one-time investment. I would spend that money again in a heartbeat, because I’ve seen the success of my students, and it speaks for itself.”
Kristal Dunville
Division-Wide Recognition and Confidence That Carries Forward
Dunville’s results stood out so much that the division invited her to present at a professional development session, where she shared her approach and samples of student work, including from her most struggling learners. As a thank-you, the division gifted her additional kits and has purchased Bug Club Morphology kits for a number of teachers across the division.
Now in her second year using Bug Club Morphology, Dunville followed her Grade 3 class into Grade 4. When new students arrived and saw “Bug Club” on the daily schedule, her returning students explained it to them and told them how it had helped. One returning student described, unprompted, how he now uses prefixes, suffixes, and root words to understand unfamiliar words.
Another student who had never wanted to read aloud in class began volunteering to read and share. “I think it’s just that her confidence has really grown because she’s now able to decode those words,” says Dunville. “And even just from the practice of doing the Bug Club lesson, practicing everything together and knowing that it was okay and safe, she’s always raising her hand now.”
For Dunville, that shift in confidence is the measure that matters most. The data told one story. Her students’ willingness to try, to read aloud, to take risks with language—that tells another.