You see, that's exactly what I'm talking about: the connection between the literal meaning of "disaster" and its modern usage. I think that to connect "disaster" to astrology in order to clarify meaning is a good idea. In the great likelihood that many students are not familiar with astrology, that would be another great word to morphologicalize in tandem with "disaster".
Twosleepy: Thanks for the tips. I have definitely hammered away at parts of speech and have found them to be essential to both the students' learning a new word through morphology as well as to my assessment of the level at which they have grasped the meaning of the new word.
Why did I not think of addressing cognate suffixes (-ly and -mente) before? Good idea. I've utilized cognates when explaining some roots and a few prefixes like con- but for some reason neglected the suffixes. Isopaleocopria, I guess.
