Add the Ending

What Add the Ending practices

Add the Ending is about the word endings -s, -ing and -ed, and what each one tells you. A picture of one cat becomes three cats, an action starts happening, or an action is finished, and your child adds the ending that makes the word match.

Endings come with their spelling changes shown as the word rewrites itself: hop becomes hopping, ride becomes riding, cry becomes cried. Other examples include cats, dogs, running, snowing, jumped and landed.

Who it suits

Readers who are comfortable with short words and are starting to meet endings in books, usually around ages six to eight. It sits in the Word Builder level of the ReadPals journey and helps older readers who drop endings when they read aloud.

How a round goes

The base word and picture appear, then the picture changes. Your child drags one of three ending tiles onto the word. A wrong tile springs back, the picture shrugs, and the question is said again; from the second miss the right tile glows under a bouncing arrow.

The endings take turns from round to round, so all three get practice. A ring of five rounds takes about three minutes.

A tip for home

Act it out: “I jump. Now I am jumping. Now I jumped!” Let your child call out the ending each time. Then write one base word and add each ending with a sticky note, reading the new word aloud together.

Try next

• Part Meanings — matches endings and prefixes like un- and re- to their meanings.
• Read and Do — reads whole sentences where endings change the action.
• Split the Word — breaks longer words into readable parts.
• Syllable Types — names the pattern inside each syllable: closed, open or consonant-le.

Read more

Can my child still catch up on reading?: what helps an older reader close the gap, starting this week.