Sharpen Reading Activities
Building Words That End in "ed"
In this activity, Learners practice building and reading words like "jumped" and "rained" by dragging an "ed" tile onto the end of a list of base words. Activities that involve adding an ending to a base word help prepare Learners for reading two-syllable words. Sometimes the "ed" ending is pronounced /t/ as in "jumped." Other times it's /d/ as in "rained." And sometimes it is /ed/ as in "started." The sound for "ed" in these words is not arbitrary, but follows a phonological rule that native speakers of English learn implicitly. This variation makes words ending with the ending "ed" challenging to sound out, but focusing the Learner's attention on the base word allows her to access her grammatical knowledge to help with the task.
