Grade 5 Vocabulary, Morphology & Word Study: Adding the Suffix -ous
144 printable 5th Grade vocabulary & word study worksheets on Adding the Suffix -ous. 4 activity types: Lesson, Match Up, Read and Draw, Word Search. The first three are free to download; All Access opens all 144.
Practice pages support a program; they are not the lesson. These sheets reinforce Phonics, Decoding, and Early Fluency — Grade 5, the complete K–5 reading curriculum from Faith Readers. See every program →
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Includes 4 activity types: Lesson, Match Up, Read and Draw, Word Search.
Teaching Adding the Suffix -ous
What it is
This is the spelling side of the -ous ending: what happens to the base word at the join. A final e usually goes (fame, famous), a final y becomes i (glory, glorious), and after a soft c or g the e stays (courage, courageous; outrage, outrageous).
When a child is ready
Teach it once the child already knows that -ous means 'full of' and reads the words fluently.
If they struggle
Have the child write the base word first, look at what it ends in, and only then add the ending. Sort a mixed list into three columns, no change, drop the e, y becomes i, and check each spelling by reading it back aloud, since courageous read without its e stops sounding right.
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