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Many students struggle with their reading development and according to the curriculum, the school has a responsibility to find methods that support and develop all students learning. Morphological awareness and how it contributes to reading development has got more attention in research lately. However, not so many studies have explored the role of morphology when learning to read in a Swedish context. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between morphological awareness and word reading ability in a group of students in grade 2 and 4, and to investigate what distinguishes students with weak and typical word reading regarding morphological awareness, letter knowledge and phonological processing skills. Pearson’s product moment correlation and an independent t-test were used to answer the research questions. The results showed that there was a significant correlation between morphological awareness and word-reading ability, especially with orthographic sight-word reading. The results also showed a significant difference between students with weak and typical word reading skills in grade 2, in terms of phonological awareness, RAN and morphological awareness. The study can give special education teachers some more knowledge of the importance of morphology for word reading ability and the advantage of allowing morphology to take a larger part in reading instruction in primary school.