-tion and -sion
Say it "shun". It almost always means the word is a thing, not an action.
What this skill is
Morphology — prefixes, suffixes and roots — carries both pronunciation and meaning, and it is what makes long words tractable from about grade three onwards. Examples: action, nation, station, motion, fiction.
Three ways to teach it at home
- Cover the ending and read the base word, then uncover it. Meaning lives in the parts.
- Collect examples of the same ending across a week and put them on the wall.
- Ask what the word means with the part and without it. Morphology is a vocabulary skill as much as a decoding one.
The full word list
Every word here uses only spellings taught at or before this rung, so nothing needs guessing. Print it, or read it down the column together.
action · nation · station · motion · fiction · vacation · question · mention · section · direction
Where this sits in the ladder
Comes after
Opens next
This is the top of its strand.
Questions people actually ask
What grade is "-tion and -sion"?
It sits in grade 3 in most sequences, and it is aligned to RF.3.3. In Ladderbug it opens once prefixes: un re pre dis mis is solid — grade labels are a rough guide, and readiness is what actually matters.
Is this game free?
Yes. This page needs no account, no email and no card, and there are no advertisements. It saves progress in your own browser.
This is one rung of 82.
Open the whole ladder — free