Suffixes -sion and -ssion Word Search

MISSION says “shun”. TENSION says “shun”. VISION says “zhun” — a softer, buzzier sound. Three near-identical endings, three subtly different jobs. After -tion, this is the puzzle where the “shun” family stops being simple and starts being interesting.

This word search contains fifteen words ending -sion or -ssion. It is designed for Year 3 and Year 4 pupils building on the -tion puzzle, and for third and fourth grade readers in the US. Larger grid, words left-to-right and top-to-bottom only.

MISSION · PASSION · SESSION · TENSION · VERSION · MANSION · VISION · PENSION · FUSION · INVASION · OCCASION · DIVISION · DECISION · EROSION · EXPLOSION

When the shun sound is not spelled tion

Three sub-rules sit inside this grid, and children can learn to spot which family a word belongs to by ear. The -ssion ending (double S) almost always says “shun” — MISSION, PASSION, SESSION. The -sion ending (single S) is split: after a consonant it says “shun” too (TENSION, MANSION, PENSION); after a vowel it softens to “zhun” — the buzzier sound in VISION, DIVISION, EXPLOSION, where the S sits between two vowels and can’t help vibrating.

The practical guidance for spelling is messier than the listening rule, but it has a shape: many “zhun” words come from bases ending in -de or -se (DECIDE → DECISION, ERODE → EROSION, EXPLODE → EXPLOSION). When a -de base loses its E, the D meets -sion and the buzz arrives. That base-finding habit from the -tion puzzle is doing the same job here in a different costume.

Five words to compare

1. VISION and DIVISION both buzz. Ask your child to read both aloud and listen for the “zh” — the sound in the middle of “measure”. Hand on throat helps: voiced sounds vibrate. Phonics by feel.
2. MISSION has two S’s for a reason. The base is MISS — one S, then another, then -ion. Children can build it: MISS + ION = MISSION. Compound logic, applied to a Latin loanword: spelling as carpentry.
3. DECISION grew from a verb. Ask your child to find the base — DECIDE. Then watch the transformation: drop the E, swap D for S? No — keep the D-feel but write S, and the suffix -ion arrives. The “zhun” sound is the give-away that something cousin-like just happened.
4. EXPLOSION earns a sound effect. When found, the class says “KABOOM!” then spells the word. Linking a strong sound to the spelling makes the buzzy ending stick to the meaning.
5. OCCASION is the trickiest in the grid. Double C, single S, ends in “zhun”. Show your child the spelling letter by letter while saying the word slowly — and watch them count the letters that don’t say what they expect. The mismatch IS the memory.

Three ways to sort the shun family

As a buzz-or-hiss listening sort. Read each grid word aloud, the class signals buzz (zhun) or hiss (shun). Then sort the same words by spelling: -ssion, -sion. The two sorts produce different groupings — buzz/hiss splits by vowel-before-S, while -ssion/-sion splits by spelling. Two views of the same fifteen words trains both ear and eye in one go.

As a base detective task in pairs. Pairs work backwards from each grid word to its base verb: DECISION → DECIDE, EXPLOSION → EXPLODE, INVASION → INVADE, EROSION → ERODE. The pattern emerges: -de bases become -sion words, -ss bases become -ssion words. A spelling rule discovered by reverse-engineering ten real examples is owned far better than one announced from the front.

One-to-one at home. For homeschooling families: pick three -sion/-ssion words and use them in conversations across one day — “I have a MISSION”, “we have a DECISION to make”, “what’s your VERSION of the story?”. Saying a target spelling pattern out loud at meaningful moments is how vocabulary moves from a list to an instinct.

What comes next

• Suffix -ous word search — the adjective-making suffix: full of…
• Suffix -tion word search — the previous puzzle in this series
• All spelling word searches — the full series from foundation phonics to Year 6

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