Who Does It? The Person Word

Eight cards fill this 3rd grade page in two columns. Each shows a person doing something on the left and, on the right, a word in a box above an empty brick with a writing line. The child looks at the person, reads the word beside them and writes the person word in the brick. On the sheet shown the words are run, photograph, dance, garden, teach, bake, farm and sing, and the pictures show a girl running, a boy with a camera, a ballet dancer, a gardener with a spade, a teacher with a clipboard, a baker with a loaf, a young farmer with a pitchfork and a boy singing with a guitar.

Adding an ending to make a person word is one of the most useful suffix patterns: teach becomes teacher, bake becomes baker, farm becomes farmer. All eight words on this sheet take -er, and the interest is in the small spelling changes that come with it: the dropped e of baker and dancer, the doubled n of runner, and photographer, where the ending joins a long word without any change at all. Say each finished word aloud and listen for how the ending keeps the same sound every time.

One sheet, eight words, eight person words to write. Several pictures show children rather than grown-ups at work, the runner, the photographer and the singer among them, so talk about a person word as someone who does something, whether or not it is their job. This face is above the second grade band of the family and fits grade 3 suffix work. The root words in sentences face is its natural companion.