Systematic and Explicit Instruction on Using Singular and Plural Nouns and Verbs in Complete Sentences

Nov 13, 2023

4 min read

What are Singular and Plural Nouns?

We use singular and plural nouns to tell how many of a noun are in a sentence. Singular nouns mean there is one person, place, or thing. For example, the word house means one house. Plural nouns mean there is more than one person, place, or thing. For example, houses means more than one house. Plural nouns don’t tell us how many. They simply mean there is more than one. If I say I have sisters, I could have two sisters, or I could have twenty sisters!

Here is a video to help explain singular and plural nouns to your students.

Spelling Rules

To show that a noun is plural, we usually add the letter s to the end of the word. For example, one cat becomes three cats. Depending on the age and abilities of your students, this may be the only rule you teach. If you are teaching older students, you will need to teach or review the spelling rules for plural nouns.

most words, just add s
if a word ends in a consonant + y, change the y to i and add es
if a word ends in a vowel + y, just add s
if a word ends in f or fe, drop the f or fe and add ves
if a word ends in o, add es
if a word ends in s, x, z, ch, or sh, add es

Plus, we have some irregular plural nouns that don’t follow a rule! Also, this program does not address Latin plural nouns, such as focus becoming foci.

Singular and Plural Verbs

We use singular and plural verbs with singular and plural nouns. You must have a singular verb with a singular noun and a plural verb with a plural noun. In the previous lesson, we only used plural nouns and verbs because plural verbs are the easiest to spell. We have to add the letter s to singular verbs. For example, the kid plays.

Here is a video to explain singular and plural nouns and verbs to your students.

Articles

You will notice that we also need an article with singular verbs. We do not need an article with plural verbs, but we can use one. There are three articles in English: a, an, and the.

A – We use this with singular nouns that start with a consonant.

An – We use this with singular nouns that start with a vowel.

The – We use this with singular or plural nouns that start with either a consonant or a vowel.

Example Sentences

After you introduce singular and plural nouns, singular and plural verbs, and articles to your students, show them some example sentences. Depending on your time for writing instruction, it may be several lessons. When looking at example sentences, point out the capitalized first letter, spacing between words, and ending punctuation. Speaking of ending punctuation. I recommend sticking with periods until you can give a lesson on the other types of ending punctuation.

This should be a quick part of the lesson. You can ask students what they notice but quickly point out the important parts of the sentence. In this case, you would want students to notice the subject-verb agreement between the singular and plural nouns and verbs. You also want them to notice when and how we use articles in sentences.

Singular and Plural Noun Pictures

You can show these five pictures to your students to help them brainstorm a list of singular and plural nouns. Give students about thirty seconds to think about each picture. Then, have them share with a partner. Finally, collect three to five ideas per picture to record in a class anchor chart.

Printable Resources

These ideas will get you started teaching your singular and plural nouns and verbs lessons, but we have printable resources that will make a huge difference. Luckily, my team at For the Love has you covered! You can get all of these resources to make planning and teaching a breeze!

Word List: A list of words for the lesson for when your mind goes blank while brainstorming.

Word Chart: A tool for students to organize words they will use to write sentences. Students record words from brainstorming on their word charts, so when they write sentences, they can focus their attention on the mechanics and syntax of the sentence instead of coming up with new ideas. Word charts are the perfect place to integrate social studies and science lessons into writing.

Example Sentences: A list of example sentences that fit the purpose of the lesson. You can use these to build anchor charts, differentiate instruction or practice for students, or clarify your own understanding of the topic.

Sentence Practice: Students will use the words from their word charts to write complete sentences. The sentence practice pages have more suggestion words as well as reminders about the mechanics of a complete sentence. Students who do not need the support of the handwriting lines can write on a piece of notebook paper, or you can give them the alternate writing paper. It does not have the specific lesson information on it.