Teaching Past & Present Verbs with -ING & -ED

Just stick -ing on a verb to make it present tense, and -ed to make it past tense, right? While the rules aren't quite that simple, luckily adding the affixes -ing and -ed is pretty straightforward for students that understand basic phonics.

Double Consonants + -ING This is the first rule I teach my students when it comes to tenses. For words with a short vowel and one final consonant, double the final consonant before adding -ing, such as running, tapping, and cutting. While it might seem more intuitive to teach this rule after teaching when just to add -ing, many students are most familiar and confident with short vowel words, so I find it helpful to begin here.

CVCe Words + -ING For words that follow the CVCe pattern (consonant-vowel-consonant-e), such as drive and tape, drop the e before adding -ing. I find it helpful to compare words with and without an e here, such as tap and tape. Students should learn that the double consonant in tapping indicates that the a will be short, whereas the single consonant in taping indicates the the a will be long.

Adding -ING After teaching the previous two rules, I teach students that we can simply add -ing to some words. These words are words that end in two or more consonants (melt, kick), have a vowel team (pay, sleep), or an r-controlled vowel (bark, turn).

Double Consonants + -ED The rule for when to double the consonant before adding -ed is just the same as for when to add -ing. For this reason, I sometimes teach these rules together, depending on the students. When the base word has a short vowel and one final consonant, double the final consonant before adding -ed, as in hopped and jogged.

CVCe + -ED Again, this rule is just the same as for when adding -ing. For words that end in a consonant and e, drop the e before adding -ed, as in voted and taped.

Adding + -ED When a word has a vowel team, r-controlled vowel, or two or more final consonants, we simply add -ed. Words such as dreamed, barked, and melted follow this rule.

A Note on Teaching -ED The affix -ED can be pronounced three different ways: /d/ (as in turned), /t/ (as in kicked), and /id/ (as in painted). I do teach this to students when we begin to learn about -ED, but I don't spend a ton of time having them differentiate between the sounds in an isolated way. Most students already know how to pronounce the past tense verbs correctly when speaking, so I work towards having them recognize the base word and then pronounced the past tense word accordingly. For example, most students know walked is pronounced "walked," not "walk-id." However, ELL students may struggle with this. I recommend just taking more time with this as needed, and perhaps teaching he /d/, /t/, /id/ pronunciations more explicitly.

Irregular Past Tense Verbs After teaching the rules for regular past tense verbs, I teach common irregular verbs. Most of these verbs just involve a simple vowel change, such as win/won, run/ran, and drive/drove. However, they do not follow any generalized rules and still need to be memorized.