Hi friends!
The weather has turned chilly here in the past few days, just in time for the pumpkin patches to open, fall festivals, and Halloween! We’ve been doing Halloween and Fall activities the past several weeks, and the Fall theme will continue for the next several weeks after Halloween, mixed with Thanksgiving activities as well!
I have several students right now working on plurals. Not just irregular plurals, but regular plurals too. These kiddos frequently leave off the /s/ on the end so there is no difference between the singular and plural forms. Since we’ve been targeting this goal pretty hard over the past few weeks, here are three tricks I used that really helped:
Tips for Teaching Plurals:
1). I use tangibles to teach plurals, and make the kids use a complete sentence when asking for more. If they said “Can I have more Cherrios?” they got several Cheerios. If they left the /s/ off the end and asked for “more Cherrio,” they only got one. It didn’t take them long to figure out how to remember that /s/! (This was even more effective on the day I used candy corn!)
2). While most of my kiddos do not have a phonological processing issue with final consonant deletion, I also use plurals to work with my FCD kids. Using the tangible for the /s/ in the final position really helps them to understand that not putting the sound on the end of the word really affects the word. (And they get practice with plurals as well!) After they understand that about the final /s/, I generalize it with other final sounds.
3). Kids love matching games. We print out pictures of singular and plural words, and the students match the pairs. Each time they turn over a card, they have to practice saying the word (and provide the other word they are looking for to complete the match). This provides TONS of practice!
Now for the Freebie:
To keep things exciting, I made a quick set of Fall-Themed Plural Flash Cards that you can download for FREE in my TPT store by clicking the link below. Hope you enjoy!
How do you teach plurals? I’d love to hear your tricks!
