South Dakota ELA 1.RF.3.e

ELA1st GradeReading Foundational Skills

The Standard

1.RF.3: Decode and encode using grade-level phonics and word analysis skills.

Read and understand words with inflectional endings in context and recognize how these endings change the meaning or tense of words.

South Dakota English Language Arts Standards (2025)

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students read words with endings such as -s, -ed, and -ing in sentences. They use the ending and the sentence to tell whether there is more than one thing or when an action happens.
What Mastery Looks Like: A student reads “The dogs barked” without skipping either ending. They explain that dogs means more than one dog and barked means the barking already happened.
Common Misconceptions: Students may read jumped as jump and miss that the action happened earlier. They may think the s in “She runs” means more than one, as it does in “two dogs.”
How to Assess It: Show: “Yesterday, Ben kicked the ball. Now Ben is kicking the ball.” Have students read both sentences aloud, circle the endings, and tell when each action happens.

Lesson moves

Give pairs jump, ed, and ing letter tiles to build jumped and jumping, then match each word to a sentence strip about yesterday or right now.
Ask partners, “What changes between ‘I walk to school’ and ‘I walked to school’?” Have them point to the ending and explain when each happens.
Play an ending sort with sentence cards: “Two cats nap,” “I jumped,” and “I am running.” Sort by what each ending tells us.
Read two class journal entries, “We planted seeds yesterday” and “We are watering them today,” then mark the endings that show when.

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A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 1.RF.3.e, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.

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

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