Fill in the Blank: Plural Nouns

Each of the eight rows on this 2nd grade page begins with the same picture repeated two or three times, then a short sentence with a dashed box in it. There is no word bank and no singular is printed anywhere. The sheet shown gives three cows sleeping in the barn, three lions roaring, two hens pecking, two aeroplanes landing, two penguins waddling, three monkeys swinging, three balls rolling and three bats hanging upside down. The child writes the plural in the box.

Supplying the plural from a repeated picture rather than from a printed singular is what makes this a grammar page rather than a copying one: the child has to name the thing and inflect it in the same move. The verbs agree in the plural too — sleep, roar, peck — so a child who writes cow can hear that the sentence has stopped working. Three of the rows open with a number word, which gives the count without giving the noun.

One sheet, eight plurals. All eight take a plain s on this sheet, so it is a page about the habit rather than about irregulars; it is also the only face in the cloze family that withholds both the word and any clue to its length. Two of the sentences wrap under the picture column, so read each one through before writing.