Language Arts Grade Four

Unit Two, Lesson Three: Plural Nouns

  1. before
  2. fort
  3. more
  4. chore
  5. core
  6. explore
  7. crime
  8. time
  9. rabbit
  10. kangaroo
  1. mammals
  2. coyote
  3. stone
  4. lime
  5. extreme
  6. heat
  7. temperature
  8. index
  9. humidity
  10. moisture
Plural Nouns

Some times when you pluralize a noun you have to do something different than just add an "s". Inspect this list of words that end with a "y". 


      SINGULAR NOUN		PLURAL NOUN

        story			  stories
	toy			  toys
	play			  plays
	bunny			  bunnies
	key			  keys
	jelly			  jellies
	try			  tries
As you can see, in order to pluralize a noun that ends in "y" sometimes you just add "s" and sometime you drop the "y" and add "ies". If you look at the letter before the "y" you will notice that the words to which you just add an "s" have vowels and that the words in which you drop the "y" and add "ies" have consonants. So, you just add add "s" for "boy" because the letter before the "y" is an "o" which is a vowel. To pluralize city you drop the "y" and add "ies" because the letter before the "y" is a "t" which is a consonant. 

  Remember that the vowels are a, e, i, o, and u.
There are some other rules about pluralizing, but we will deal with those in the next unit. For now we are just going to deal with adding "s" and dropping the "y" and adding "ies". Here are a few more examples. 

	SINGULAR		PLURAL

	city			cities
	boy			boys
	fly			flies
	battery			batteries
        opportunity		opportunities
	bay			bays
Here are a few sample sentences which include words from the spelling list. 

    The boys caught the rabbit after only seven tries.

    The bat is one of the only mammals that flies.

    Sue had to do one more chore before she could go to the fort.

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