Description
What our Singular and Plural Nouns lesson plan includes
Singular and Plural Nouns shows students how to change singular nouns to plural nouns. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to identify the difference between singular and plural nouns, spell plural nouns correctly, and use the correct verb with singular and plural nouns as subjects. This lesson is for students in 1st grade, 2nd grade, and 3rd grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the orange box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand. The supplies you will need for this lesson are colored pencils and the handouts. To prepare for this lesson ahead of time, you can find an image for the lesson opening, copy the handouts, and gather the supplies.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. Several of these optional additions are related to the lesson activity. You can add more singular nouns to the activity if you’d like. You can also have one student write out singular nouns and another write out plural nouns, and then have them exchange their word and create drawings based on the words. Another optional addition is to create a cut-out list of singular nouns and have students randomly choose the words and create the plural versions of the nouns. Students could also separate lists of singular and plural nouns into people, places, and things. Finally, you could plan to have a “Plural Rule of the Day” for a week, and encourage students to use words on each day that match the rule.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. It notes that this lesson includes both the general rules for making singular nouns plural as well as some exceptions to those rules. It suggests that you give students ample opportunity to practice changing singular nouns to plural ones as a part of this lesson. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
SINGULAR AND PLURAL NOUNS LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Nouns & Singular Nouns
The Singular and Plural Nouns lesson plan includes three content pages. The lesson begins with a description of what nouns are. A noun is a person, place, or thing. Some examples of a person is a boy or a girl. Some examples of a place could be a city, your school, or your home. Finally, some examples of a thing are a desk, a book, shoes, a cookie, or water. Nouns can be singular or plural, depending on whether there is only one of something or more than one of something. When there is more than one of something, the word we use for those things is called a plural noun. If there is only one, the word we use is called a singular noun. We use both of these when we read, talk, and write.
You can remember what singular nouns by thinking of the word single. A single dollar bill is one dollar, so singular nouns refer to one of something (one person, place, or thing). The lesson then lists some examples of singular nouns. These include bird, house, school, and baby. The lesson also includes some examples of these common singular nouns in sentences.
Plural Nouns
The next section of this lesson covers plural nouns. Plural means more than one. We use plural nouns to name more than one person, place, or thing. To make most singular nouns plural, you need to add an s or es to the end. For example, if you wanted to say that you had more than one book, you would say you have multiple books. You can change every singular noun into a plural noun.
The lesson then includes a chart that describes some of the rules for making singular nouns plural. It includes the rule and then examples of the singular and plural nouns. The first rule is that, for most nouns, you simply add the letter s, like with the word bird, which becomes birds. The next rule is that you add es to words that end in ch, x, s, or sh. For example, couch becomes couches. For words that end in f or fe, you change the f to a v and add es. Leaf becomes leaves. Some words don’t follow these rules. For example, roof becomes roofs, even though it ends with an f. It’s important for students to recognize these exceptions.
If a word ends in a consonant and a y, you drop the y and add ies: baby becomes babies. For words ending in a vowel and y, you simply add s: monkey becomes monkeys. You add es to words ending in o: potato becomes potatoes. Some words that end in o just need an s added: auto becomes autos. Some nouns require you to change the spelling to make them plural. For example, man becomes men and foot becomes feet. Finally, some nouns don’t need to change at all to be plural. Words like deer, sheep, fish, pants, and cattle are all both the singular and plural forms.
Using Singular & Plural Nouns
The final section of this lesson teaches students how to use singular and plural nouns. They must choose the correct verb or action word to go with the noun. Verbs, or action words, tell you what the subject of a sentence is doing. They can also give you information about the subject. You cannot use the same form of a verb with both a singular and plural noun. The kind of verb might change or you might need to add the letter s to the verb. The lesson includes a chart with some examples. One of them shows that when using the singular noun dog, you might write the phrase dog is, but when dog is plural (dogs), you would write dogs are.
The best way to learn these rules is to practice using both singular and plural nouns! While most nouns can be made plural simply by adding the letter s, others require you to change the spelling or add additional letters. It’s also important to pay attention to the verbs you use with either singular or plural nouns.
SINGULAR AND PLURAL NOUNS LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Singular and Plural Nouns lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
DRAWING ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity worksheet, students will first draw a picture to match a singular word (for example, the word witch). Next, they will write the plural version of that word and draw a second picture to match the plural word.
Students can work in pairs to complete this activity if you’d prefer.
WRITE THE PLURAL NOUN PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet asks students to complete two exercises. For the first exercise, they must look at a list of singular nouns and write down the plural version of each noun on the lines provided. For the second exercise, they will read sentences and circle the correct word or words in each sentence. They must choose between the singular and plural versions of various nouns for this exercise.
SINGULAR AND PLURAL NOUNS HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
For the homework assignment, students are asked to first write the matching missing plural or singular noun in the given chart. Next, they will look at a list of singular nouns, change them to their plural forms, and write a sentence using the plural form. Finally, they must fill in the blanks in a paragraph about the rules for making singular nouns plural.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. No answer key is provided for the activity worksheet, as students’ answers will vary. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
