5th Grade spelling
5th Grade Words Ending in Ive
Words ending in ive: positive, active, creative, effective, expensive. Play hangman with the list or print a spelling worksheet with answers.
Read the spelling list
The pattern: The ending ive means having the quality of: create becomes creative. English words never end in a plain v, so the e is always there.
The ending ive makes adjectives that mean having the quality of or tending to. Create becomes creative, act becomes active, effect becomes effective. English words do not end in a plain v, so a silent e always follows, and it is why the ending is spelled ive and not iv. A few words are nouns or verbs with the same ending, such as native and objective.
This list of thirty includes positive, negative, active, creative, effective, expensive, competitive, impressive, sensitive and extensive. Many fifth grade readers will have used these adjectives for years without noticing the pattern. The point is to see the ending as one unit and to notice how the base changes: create loses its e, compete becomes competitive, and impress simply adds ive.
30 entries. Our solver needed 0.7 wrong guesses on average: 26 easy, 4 medium and 0 hard. The toughest is positive (2 misses), the quickest executive (0).
- positive Medium · 2
- active Easy · 1
- effective Easy · 1
- executive Easy · 0
- negative Easy · 0
- massive Medium · 2
- alternative Easy · 0
- expensive Easy · 1
- native Easy · 1
- conservative Easy · 0
- creative Easy · 0
- competitive Easy · 1
- representative Easy · 0
- exclusive Medium · 2
- extensive Easy · 0
- relative Easy · 1
- impressive Easy · 0
- offensive Easy · 1
- sensitive Easy · 1
- administrative Easy · 0
- narrative Easy · 0
- defensive Easy · 1
- comprehensive Easy · 1
- initiative Easy · 0
- objective Easy · 1
- progressive Easy · 1
- aggressive Easy · 0
- legislative Easy · 0
- collective Medium · 2
- productive Easy · 0
Words worth a closer look
- positiveThe classic ive word. Two syllables of base and one of ending.
- creativeCreate loses its final e, then ive is added.
- competitiveCompete becomes competitive. The e turns into an i.
- expensiveOnly one s and one n in the middle, though many students double them.
Teaching it
Present the ending as a short rule: no English word ends in v, so after v comes e. Then work through the bases one at a time. A frequent error is leaving out the silent e (positiv, activ) or writing iv because the ending sounds like iv. Another is doubling letters in expensive, which has only one s and one n in the middle.
A good hangman tactic is to guess i, v, e after the first few letters, because every answer ends with them. Print the worksheet and ask students to write the verb or noun that each word comes from, then put a sentence next to it.
Print a 5th Grade Words Ending in Ive worksheet
Eight puzzles on one US Letter page, with a clue, letter blanks, an empty frame to draw in, an alphabet strip to cross off and circles to count misses. Page two is the answer key.
Need another sheet?
Draw eight different words from this list, right here. Same layout, new answer key.
Keep going
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