Saturday 16 April 2011

Adding the Suffix 'ed'

I thought that I had pushed Eve a step too far with this to start with. In the first session we built words from root words, adding 'ed' with an extra consonant if needed, as in the picture below.  After this we read two pages from the reading book she is on which contained 'ed' words. Eve really struggled with it and got quite frustrated. The reason being is that I had not prepared properly and had neglected to realise that 'ed' endings are sounded three different ways depending on the root word. For example:
  • 'id' sound as in 'chatted' or 'ended'
  • 't' sound as in 'jumped' or 'dropped'
  • 'd' sound as in 'yelled'
To help Eve get past this I got her to visualise telling her Daddy about what she had done, so where the text read 'He ran and skipped', I waited until she had read the root word 'skip' then prompted with "And you would tell Daddy that you skip......" and then Eve managed to finish off with "I skipped" and she had the correct pronunciation.

I did consider leaving it totally and coming back in a month or so but decided to try another tack and we got out the movable alphabet and Eve chose a root word then spelled it using the letters, she was saying 'pinched' with a 'd' sound at the end but spelling it 'ed'. Afterwards when we read the next two pages of the reading book, she more naturally pronounced the correct endings without prompting. I was really surprised and pleased..... I think I underestimated her!!!

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