Summary
When the Pranksters unleash a chaos machine that 'un-does' everything in Fuego — turning muffins into un-muffins, chairs into un-chairs — the Electric Company figures out that the prefix un- reverses meaning in any word it touches. A vocabulary deep-dive built around how prefixes change meaning, illustrated with comedic cause-and-effect throughout.
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Teaching resources
Discussion questions
Discussion
The prefix un- is one of the most common word-changers in English.
- What happened to the muffins and chairs when the un- machine hit them? What does un- do to a word's meaning?
- Think of three more words that start with un-. What does each one mean? What does the word mean without un-?
- Are there any words starting with un- that don't follow the 'opposite/reverse' rule? (Examples: uncle, under, universe.) How can you tell the difference?
Quick work-a-long
Vocabulary: prefix, un-, opposite, reverse, meaning.
Try it: Make a two-column chart — 'Word' and 'Un-word.' Write five pairs (happy/unhappy, lock/unlock, tie/untie, safe/unsafe, pack/unpack). Write a sentence using one pair to show how the meaning changes.