Learn Spelling Rules Challenge 3: Drop 'e' to add 'ing' (7-11 years) - Activity Pack

The Activity Pack for 7-11 year-olds introduces Challenge 3 in learning spelling rules, which focuses on how to correctly add suffixes to verbs. The key rule taught is that when a verb ends with an 'e' followed by a vowel, such as when adding 'ing', the 'e' is dropped because the 'i' in 'ing' serves the same purpose as the 'e', making it redundant. For example, 'dive' becomes 'diving', not 'diveing'. This rule helps simplify spelling and ensures that children understand the mechanics behind forming present participles and other verb forms.

The pack provides a variety of exercises to reinforce this rule. Children are given a list of root words and are challenged to transform them by adding suffixes like 'ing', 'ed', 'er', 'y', 'al', and 'able'. For instance, 'hope' becomes 'hoping', 'hoped', 'hoper', and so forth. Additionally, the pack addresses what happens to adjectives when they take on comparative and superlative forms, such as 'safe' turning into 'safer' and 'safest' when the 'e' is dropped and 'er' or 'est' is added. There are also exercises for verbs that require doubling the consonant, like 'panic' becoming 'panicking' and 'panicked'. The pack includes practice activities like 'Read, Copy, Cover & Spell' and tests to consolidate learning. It also reminds students of the general principle: when a suffix starting with a vowel is added, the final 'e' of the word is dropped.