Lesson video

Hello, my name is Ms. Morgan and I am an Oak teacher based in London.

I'm originally from Wales and so I brought a little friend with me who may help us with our spelling today.

This is Mr. Dragon.

Today, we're going to be learning about suffixes, specifically plurals.

One of the things I like to use when I'm teaching is something called my turn, your turn.

So if I say something and I do this, then you will say it after me.

For example, plurals.

Well done, let's get started.

So our agenda for today is, first of all, we will look at some key vocabulary.

We're then going to look at, and investigate, and generate some rules for adding suffixes.

And then we are going to set 10 spelling words for you.

For this lesson, you're going to need an exercise book, or some paper, something to write on.

You're going to need a pencil, and you're going to need to make sure you switched your brain on, so that you are ready to learn.

Pause now if you need to go and get those things.

So our key vocabulary for today.

There are four words that I want you to think about using.

The first word is suffix.

Suffix.

The second word is noun.

Noun.

The third word is singular.

Singular.

The fourth word is plural.

Plural.

Let's look at what these words mean.

So suffix is a group of letters at the end of a word that would change its meaning.

A noun is a person, place, or thing.

For example, dragon is a noun because it is a thing.

Singular means one thing, one dragon.

Plural means more than one thing, lots of dragons.

Can you remember the words, the key vocabulary? Pause and see if you can think of them.

So a group of letters at the end of a word that changes its meaning, that's a suffix.

A person, place, or thing? Noun.

One thing, singular.

More than one thing, plural and that's what we're learning to do today.

We're investigating plurals.

So we have two types of vowels.

You remember this from your learning before, we have short vowels and we have long vowels.

The short vowels are A E I O U.

I like to remember this by my vowel rap, have a look at my fingers.

Whoa, this is hard to see.

A E I O U, these are our vowels.

Should we have a go one more time? A E I O U, these are our vowels.

And the long vowels.

There are actually lots of long vowels, so I only put a few today.

Can you try and read them with me? A, E, I, O, U.

So let's have a look at some short vowels in some words.

This word is pig.

P-I-G, I is the short vowel.

This says clap.

C-L-A-P, clap.

A is the short vowel.

This word is pain.

P-AI-N.

A is the short vowel.

This word says boast.

B-OA-S-T.

O is the long vowel.

Oh, I've just realised I made a mistake.

Did anyone spot that? I think I might've said that the A in pain was a short vowel.

I'm just trying to see if you're paying attention.

So now we're going to investigate and generate some rules.

So remember, singular means one thing, one dragon, one pen.

And plural means many things.

So one pen, we now have lots of pens or many pens.

Can you listen to how the word changes? Pens.

I can hear a S at the end of pens.

Here we've written pen.

How do you think pen might turn into the pens? That's right, we've added an S to the end of the word to make it plural.

Here is a ball.

Here are lots of balls.

Can you hear what's happened to the word at the end? Here is ball and here we've written balls.

We've added a S to the end to make the word plural.

So today we're investigating, adding S.

The suffix is S, we're adding it to nouns to make them into plurals.

Here are the words, river, boat, dog.

Can you match them to the correct plurals? Let's do my turn, your turn.

River becomes rivers.

We've added a S to make it plural.

Boat becomes boats.

Dog becomes dogs.

Now you have a go.

You can either write these words down or say them aloud, maybe even to a toy.

Perhaps you have a dragon in the room that you'd like to use.

The words are pot, shirt, and hand.

Can you make them into plurals? How did you get on? So pot becomes pots.

Shirt becomes shirts.

Hand becomes hands.

What's the rule there? Can you whisper it to your pencil or whisper it to your toy? So in order to make these words plurals, we add the S suffix.

The suffix is fixing the S to the end of the word.

So the suffix is S, so we add the S suffix to the singular noun to form the plural.

Let's have a look at some other types of plurals.

See if you can spot how these are a little bit different.

Here is a baby, one baby.

Now we're going to see the plural of baby.

Maybe you already know what it might be.

Babies, that's correct.

What can you hear at the end of the word babies? It sounds like the same S.

Here's the spelling of babies.

That looks a little bit different.

I noticed that we have a Y at the end of baby, but that the Y has changed to be a I, and we've added E-S.

Let's have a look with another example.

Here is a picture of a lady.

We have many ladies.

I wonder if you're thinking what's going to happen to the spelling of lady? I know that we spell lady with a Y, and we replace the Y with an I, and we add E-S.

So this is what we're investigating now.

We're investigating whether we change the Y to an I and we add E-S.

Here are three words that end in Y, pony, cherry, story.

Can you match them to the correct plurals? See if you can spot how the spelling has changed.

Pony becomes ponies.

Cherry becomes cherries.

Story becomes stories.

Now you have a go.

This time you either say it out loud or you write it down.

Can you turn these nouns, penny, city, into their plural version? Off you go.

Penny becomes pennies, and we've changed the Y into an I and added E-S.

City becomes cities.

We've replaced the Y with an I, and we've added E-S.

So what's the rule when we have a Y the end of a word? We change the Y to an I, and we add E-S suffix to the singular noun to form the plural.

So let's have a recap and think about which rules we have learnt so far.

So I have two lots of words here.

So the first rule is that actually usually to make a noun plural we just add S.

If we have a word that ends in Y, we have to change it to an I and add E-S.

The third rule, we are going to be adding the suffix S to the nouns.

You might say, "Ms. Morgan, we've already added S "at the beginning." That's the one we usually use when we're trying to make things into plurals, but there's something a little bit different happening with these sets of nouns.

Have a look and see if you can try and spot it.

Here I have a picture of one tray and the picture of some trays, many trays.

These could be trays that you put your work in.

Here are the words, tray and trays.

We just added an S at the end here, but you might say, "Ms. Morgan, we just learned "that when we had a Y at the end, "we change the Y to an I and add E-S." That's not the case here.

Something different is happening here.

You may notice that the letter before the Y is a vowel, and that's the clue.

Have a see if it works for the next example.

We have two words, boy and donkey.

Can you match them to the correct plurals and see if we have a vowel before the Y? Off you go.

That's correct, boy becomes boys, donkey becomes donkeys.

But even though we put a Y, we do not change it to an I and add E-S, we just add the suffix S to the end of the word.

And if you look at the word boys, you can see that there is a letter O, the vowel O that comes before Y, and that's why we just add an S.

And the same with donkeys.

We have an E before the Y and we just add S.

Pause, write down these words, and see if the same rule applies.

Toy becomes toys, journey becomes journeys.

And you can see that I've highlighted in green, that the O is a vowel, and it comes before the Y, so we just need to add the suffix S.

And in journeys, we have an E before the Y, which is a vowel, so we just need to add the suffix S.

So can you turn to your favourite toy, maybe your mom, your dad, or your pencil, and tell them what is the spelling rule, if a word ends in Y but has a vowel before it? Read along with me.

So if the word ends in a Y and it has a vowel before it, we just add S.

What spelling rules have we learned today? There are three rules that we have learned when we are adding a suffix to make a noun plural.

Can you pause, have a think, and say them to your pencil, to your dragon, to your toy, to your mum or dad.

So the first rule we've learned is that actually the one we tend to use most of the time, and usually to make a noun plural, we will just add an S.

For example, trucks, flowers, chairs, tables, drinks, mangoes, bananas, et cetera, et cetera.

The second rule we have learned is that if a word, if a noun ends in a Y, we change that to an I, and add E-S.

For example, daisies, puppies, cherries, stories.

And the third rule we've learned is that if it ends in a Y, but has a vowel before it, then we just add S.

For example, trays, monkeys, donkeys, toys.

So let's see if you can remember some of these rules and apply them too.

I'm going to show you a word and I want you to see if you can work out what rule we will use to add a suffix to make it plural.

The word is step.

So the plural would be steps.

That's right, we just add an S for steps.

Next word is cherry.

How do we make cherry into cherries? It has a Y on the end, so we change the Y into an I, and we add E-S.

The next word is toy.

It also has a Y on the end, but it has a vowel before it, so we just add an S.

Now we're going to go through your 10 spelling words.

Write down the numbers 1 to 10 in a list.

I will go through the 10 words with you to check you understand the meaning, make sure you write them down carefully.

You might want to pause the video to check that you've done this.

Here are the 10 spellings.

You'll notice that we've grouped them in colours.

This is to match the three rules that we have learned today for adding a suffix to make a noun plural.

The first four spellings, we just add S.

This is the usual rule that we tend to use.

Spelling number one is noses.

Noses.

The children's noses were freezing from the cold.

Pause if you need to write it down.

Number two, houses.

Houses.

The houses were all different shapes and sizes.

Three, windows.

Windows.

The windows were filthy.

Four, dreams. Dreams. His dreams kept him awake at night.

Number five, and these spellings all have the rule where they end with a Y, we replace the Y with an I, and we add an E-S.

Spelling number five, cities.

Cities.

He visited lots of cities during his time when he was working abroad.

Six, families.

Families.

All the families in the street decided to get together.

Seven, stories.

Stories.

The children love to hear their stories being read out to the class.

Eight, in these spelling rules they also just add an S.

But because they've got a Y at the end, it's a little bit strange.

Remember, you've got to look back at the vowel and if you've got a vowel and a Y, we just add S.

Spelling number eight is trays.

Trays.

The children's trays were overflowing with their work.

Number nine, boys.

Boys.

The boys decided to work hard and build a car from scratch.

Number 10, monkeys.

Monkeys.

The monkeys went wild when they could see all the food in the tree.

That's the end of your lesson today.

Well done.

Congratulations, you've worked really hard.

Remember to practise your spellings, try to do it every day, little and often really is the best way to learn your spellings.

Goodbye.