How to Teach Endings

Phonics They Use

Patricia Cunningham

pages 58-59, 106 

Before going on to the complex task of helping children understand how our vowel system works, we should consider what students need to be taught about endings. The most common endings are, of course, the s that makes nouns plural and the -s, -ed, -ing endings on verbs. Many children figure these out on their own because of their oral language knowledge. Some children become confused, however, when they see a known word with an ending, particularly when some kind of spelling changed is involved.  

The principles for teaching endings are the same as for teaching any other strategies. Make sure children have something known to which they can relate the abstract principles you are teaching. Keep the jargon and rules to a minimum. Display key sentences and pictures as a reminder. If you have been using the tongue twisters in your classroom, you already have the known words and display ready and need only to draw student=s conscious attention to the endings in them. For example: 

Hungry Harry happily had hamburgers.

Smarty Smurf smashed smelly, smoky smoke bombs.

Tracy transformed triple transformers into trains and trucks. 

After reading these a few times, have students watch while you underline the ending s in hamburgers, smoke bombs, transformers, trains, and trucks. Help them to see that s means more than one. Then write on the board some words the students know:

girl boy house school teacher

Have the students add an s to these words and talk about how you can change words when you are writing to show they mean more than one. When first teaching about endings choose one. Once children are comfortable with an ending, you may want to teach the -s, -ed, -ing verb endings.

(Phonics They Use, pages 58-59) 

Review Endings with the Word Wall

Call your words; some of which will need endings added to them. Begin with just one ending, probably -s. Then do another ending, such as -ing or -ed. Then combine them so that the children are listening for all the endings. Do not call out words with spelling changes until you taught these, or give them a hint. AHaving@ remember that you must drop the e on have before adding the ending. Add endings to some, but not all of the words you call out. Have the students chant and check in the usual manner (Phonics They Use, page 106).