CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.1.4c

ELA1st GradeVocabulary Acquisition and Use

The Standard

Identify frequently occurring root words (e.g., look) and their inflectional forms (e.g., looks, looked, looking).

Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students find the familiar base word inside words with endings such as s, ed, and ing. They connect each form to the same main meaning.
What Mastery Looks Like: Students can find the base word in a group such as jump, jumps, jumped, and jumping. They can use each form in a sentence that shows its meaning.
Common Misconceptions: Students may treat words like play, plays, played, and playing as unrelated words. They may also remove letters incorrectly, such as calling s the base of sing.
How to Assess It: Give students help, helps, helped, helping, and held. Ask them to circle the four related words and underline the shared base word.

Lesson moves

Give pairs base-word cards and ending tiles labeled s, ed, and ing, then have them build and read each new form.
Ask students to write three sentences showing what someone does every day, did yesterday, and is doing now.
Play a matching game where students pair base-word cards with forms such as walks, walked, and walking.
Use the class schedule to change walk to lunch into sentences about one student, yesterday, and right now.

Free download

A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.1.4c, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.

PDF, US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white.

Learning progression

Mastery here sets students up for these next.

Keep exploring

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