Support your students' understanding of word structure with this Base Word and Ending Clip Cards activity.
Base Words and Endings Clip Card Activity
Strengthen students’ spelling and vocabulary skills with this engaging Base Words and Endings Clip Card Activity. Perfect for literacy centers or small-group rotations, this hands-on resource helps learners identify base words and explore how adding different endings changes meaning.
Students read a word with an ending, clip the correct base word, and see how word parts combine to create new forms. This fun and interactive format supports morphology awareness — an essential building block for confident readers and writers.
Explore Word Structure with Base Words and Endings
These clip cards provide a visual and tactile way for students to understand how endings like -ed, -ing, and -s change a base word. Through repeated practice, learners begin to recognize word patterns, strengthen spelling strategies, and improve comprehension.
Each card encourages students to:
- Identify the base word within a larger word.
- Connect endings to their meanings (past tense, plural, or ongoing action).
- Build fluency in decoding and encoding words.
Hands-On Word Work for the Classroom
This Base Words and Endings Clip Card Activity is ideal for literacy stations, small groups, or intervention sessions. Teachers can use it to reinforce lessons on word endings, morphology, or vocabulary building.
To play, students simply:
- Read the word on the card.
- Use a clothespin or marker to clip the matching base word.
- Check their answers as a self-correction activity.
You can also extend learning by having students write new words using the same base and different endings, or sort their completed cards by suffix type.
Use the dropdown menu to choose between the easy to print PDF or the editable Google Slide version of this resource.
This resource was created by Lindsey Phillips, a teacher in Michigan and Teach Starter Collaborator.
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