The Joy of Discovery

We have been working on conjugating verbs into simple past, simple present and simple future tenses the past week or so in Room 18.  (If you think that's impressive for second graders, just wait until the end of the year when they will be able to conjugate present continuous and past perfect tenses!) We've noticed the regular past tense ending of "-ed" can say three different things at the end of a word.  Sometimes it says /t/, sometimes it says /d/ and sometimes it even says /id/.  (We noticed that it never says /ed/!)  Today, we started to investigate the pattern further, to figure out when it says each sound (we're all about finding the patterns and rules!)  First, we noticed that the /t/ and the /d/ sounds are TWIN PAIR SOUNDS!  The only difference in the two sounds is that one is quiet (/t/) and one is noisy (/d/)!  Hmmmm...Then we noticed that when words end in a quiet sound, the -ed ending says the quiet /t/ sound.  We found that when a word ends in a noisy sound, the -ed ending says the noisy /d/ sound!  We were really on to something! 

The class got really excited as we tried out the pattern.  Sure enough, words that end with quiet sounds like "jump", "dress" and "back" all say /t/ when you add the -ed.  (Try it!  Say "jumped", "dressed" and "backed".  All the -ed endings say /t/ don't they?)  When we looked at words that end in noisy sounds, like "bag", "buzz" and "barge", they all say the noisy /d/ sound when we add -ed.  (Try it!)  Pretty cool, huh?

But then the BUGS got stumped.  So when does -ed say /id/?  Hmm...

The BUGS grabbed their books and started scouring for past tense words.  They were on the hunt for the ones that say /id/ at the end.  

They wrote down the clues they found and piled them up! 

Look at all the words they found!  Notice how all the -ed endings say /id/?  Now to turn the thinking caps on and figure out WHY!

The BUGS spent some time on their own thinking...and then they got into pairs and thought some more and then some of their faces lit up and they danced around the room saying, "I know!  I know!"  They wrote down their idea and they showed it to me.  They did a great job of discovering for themselves the pattern!

 Words that already end in a "t" or a "d" always say /id/ when we add "-ed"!!! Of course, we couldn't leave it at that!  We had to know WHY!!  

Taylor shot her hand right up and won the Grand Prize of FIVE POWER PAWS when she realized that we cannot say a /t/ or a /d/ sound TWICE at the end of a word, so we have to say /id/!  GENIUS!!  (She wasn't the only one who realized it, just the first one to shoot her hand up!) 

I am so proud of my BUGS for figuring out this puzzle today!  They are all very Bright BUGS indeed!