Irregular Plurals
Practice high-frequency irregular plurals: feet, teeth, mice, geese, children.
Session summary (SOAP)
Stays on this screen. Nothing is saved or sent.
Mark a card Correct, Correct with cue or Incorrect and the summary writes itself here.
How to run it
Sort them into kinds. Foot to feet and tooth to teeth change the vowel; leaf to leaves and knife to knives change the final consonant and add an s; child to children and person to people are one-offs; sheep, fish and deer do nothing. Four groups is easier to hold than fourteen facts. Then use them with a number — three mice, five children — which forces the plural. Ten minutes covers the set.
Cueing ladder
Start at the top. Add support one step at a time.
- IndependentPresent the item and wait 5 seconds of quiet before helping.Log as correct
- HintStress the part of the sentence that changes, or point to the word ending.Log as cued
- Sentence starterSay the first half of the sentence and let the student finish it.Log as cued
- ModelSay the correct form in the whole sentence; the student repeats it.Log as cued
Adjust it
Give a sentence starter every time, and do fewer cards.
Ask for a new sentence of the student's own with the same form, with no card to lean on.
Matching IEP goal
Given sentence cards, Student will produce the target grammatical form in sentences in 8 of 10 opportunities across 3 consecutive sessions, given no more than an indirect cue.
Send it home through the parent portal →About this activity
Fourteen irregular plurals: foot and feet, tooth and teeth, mouse and mice, goose and geese, child and children, man and men, woman and women, person and people, leaf and leaves, knife and knives, wolf and wolves, and three that do not change at all — sheep, fish and deer. The three no-change ones are the interesting group, because there is no marker to produce.
What to listen for
Listen for regularisation and double marking. Foots is regularisation; feets is double marking, and both show the rule is present. Watch the unchanging plurals specifically: three sheep with no marker is the hardest of these to produce, because it requires suppressing a rule rather than applying one, and students often say sheeps long after they have mastered feet.
Carrying it home
Counting things gives plurals for free. Two feet, three fish, five children — the number forces the plural and the child hears the correct form in a real sentence.
What's in this activity
- foot → feet
- tooth → teeth
- mouse → mice
- goose → geese
- child → children
- man → men
- woman → women
- person → people
- leaf → leaves
- knife → knives
- wolf → wolves
- sheep → sheep
- fish → fish
- deer → deer
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- First through fourth, and older students learning English as an additional language.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all fourteen pairs play with no account.
- Why does 'sheep' stay the same?
- It is a historical leftover, along with fish and deer. There is no rule to work it out, so these are learned individually — and they are harder than they look, because the student has to suppress the s rather than add one.
Use this board with your caseload
With a free account, every correct, cued and incorrect mark is saved to the student and scored against their IEP goal, with the data written up for you. Assign it as home practice through the parent portal.
Track progress freeFree for SLPs. No card, no trial clock.