There are a handful of ways to put our words in the past, adding the –ed ending being one of the most common. Again, we have a conversation, using our binder card.

There are two things to teach here. First is the idea that we use the –ed ending to put a word in the past tense. So, I say something like:

I hop. (Hop up and down.) I’m doing it right now. I hop. (Stop hopping.) Now, I’m done. I already did it before. So I don’t say, “I hop,” but rather, I say “I already hop–“

And usually the student will fill in the answer. We can run through all of the words this way.

The second thing to teach is that –ed can sound like |t| or |d|, depending on the word. Again, I simply talk with my students. I explain (very, very briefly) that there isn’t a hard and fast rule for this — the rule is that we pronounce it when we read it they way we’d say it if we were just talking. So hopped sounds like |hopt| because that is how we say it here, but tugged sounds like |tugd|, and that’s correct as well — the -ed ending is pronounced both ways.

I find my students quickly learn to say it either way, and only struggle if they’re reading a word with which they are unfamiliar (which isn’t often in Bob Books, of course).