Singular and Plural Nouns Educational Resources

Friends, toys, pizzas...lots of things are better in groups. Nouns that represent more than one of something are called plural nouns, and they have certain rules young writers need to know. Help your student get to know plural nouns with our worksheets and more, all of which are reviewed by educators and education experts. We have hands-on writing drills, online games, classroom activities and more.

After your students learn that nouns represent a person, place, animal, thing, or idea, they’ll need to learn how to show in writing when there is more than one occurrence or instance of this noun. The state of being more than one, or plural, is called plurality. Representing plurality in nouns is something students must tackle early on.

In order to show the plurality of a noun, the spelling of that noun is changed. While this may seem simple at first, there are many rules that must be taught in order to represent plurality, depending on how the singular of the noun is spelled.

• Add -s to the end of regular nouns.
  • Dog - Dogs
  • Car - Cars
• Add -es to the end if the noun ends in -s, -ss, -sh, -ch, -x, -z, or -o.
  • Bias - Biases
  • Arch - Arches
  • Class - Classes
  • Crash - Crashes
  • Tax - Taxes
  • Waltz - Waltzes
  • Hero - Heroes
• Some words require doubling the ending consonant before adding -es at the end.
  • Quiz - Quizzes
  • Gas - Gasses
• Nouns ending sound of f sound often replace the -f or -fe with -ve before adding -s at the end
  • Calf - Calves
  • Knife - Knives
• If the words ends with -um, replace the -um with -a.
  • Medium - Media
  • Datum - Data

Other words are irregular in that they don’t follow any common rule when declaring plurality. Child becomes children, die becomes dice, and foot becomes feet. Working consistently your students using resources like the ones provided above by Education.com may help your students understand the rules, or lack thereof, when assigning plurality to a noun.