Word Study/ "ed" with Lion and the Mouse

Grade: 2, 3

Length: 20 minutes

Materials: Bernadette Watts' The Lion and the Mouse, sentence strips, paper and pencil

Goal: Given vocabulary verbs, students will be able to discriminate between past and present conjugations of the words.

Items: -ed endings, entangled, scampered, snarled, terrified

What to do

Introduce the book. This book uses some words you might not know. We'll focus on these four words: entangled, scampered, snarled, and terrified. Introduce and define each word.
The ending -ed means something has happened in the past. All of these words have an -ed ending, so all of them refer to something that happened in the past.
Remember, when we are reading the story, we are looking for these words. Raise your hand or give a thumbs up when you hear them.
Read the book together. Praise students who give signals when they hear the words.
Of the four words we learned, pick your favorite. Have your students draw an image representing their favorite words. Then have them use the words in sentences of their own creation.
Go over the sentences as a class. Demonstrate how removing the -ed endings and replacing them with present verb conjugations changes the meanings of the sentences. Give students who are having trouble help and record any notes in an Activity Log. This activity can easily be modified for use with other words.