DETECTIVES Teacher's Guide - Book - Page 45
THE DETECTIVES - TEACHER’S GUIDE - Unit 1
Let’s read. (Have the students read aloud the examples: I am playing basketball, You are
playing basket ball, etc.)
Tip to remember the formation of the verb
Draw the glasses on the board.
Say:
To Be:
am, is,
are
verb
ing
You always have to have a pair of glasses in your sentences.
Check and see if you do.
If you don’t, figure out what part is missing.
Write the spelling rules on the board.
Say:
We have spelling rules for adding the ‘ing’ correctly to the verbs.
When the verb is a regular verb, like ‘jump’ or ‘play’, we just add ‘ing’, so we get ‘jumping’
and ‘playing’.
When the verb ends in ‘e’, like ‘write’ or ‘take’, we have to drop the ‘e’ and add ‘ing’, so we
get, ‘taking’ and ‘writing’.
When the verb ends in ‘ie’, like ‘lie’ or ‘tie’, we drop the ‘ie’ and add ‘y’ and then ‘ing’, so we
get ‘lying’ and ‘tying’.
When the verb ends in the letter combination of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) , like
‘run’ or ‘shop’ or ‘begin’ or ‘open’, we do one of two things:
o First we check how many syllables the word has.
o Then, if the word has one syllable, like ‘shop’ or ‘run’, we double the last letter, and
add ‘ing’, so we get ‘shopping’ and ‘running’.
o But if the word has more than one syllable, we have to check where the stress is in
the word.
For example, in the word ‘open’, which has two syllables, the stress is on the
first syllable. We say /O//pen/ not /o//PEN/. Since the stress is on the first
syllable and not on the CVC, we don’t double.
But in a word like ‘begin’, the stress is on the CVC syllable, since we say
/be//GIN/, so we must double the last letter, and we get ‘beginning’.
NOTE: Never double the letters h, w, x, y, and z .
Write on the board: Short Form
Say and ask:
In English we have a ‘short form’. This means we drop a letter or two and combine the
words.
For example, ‘I am’ becomes ‘I’m’. We drop the ‘a’ in ‘am’ and put an apostrophe instead
and make it all one word.
Let’s look in the book and see some more short forms. (Look at the table on page 17 in the
Student's Book.)
What letter was dropped in ‘she’s’? (i)
What letter was dropped in ‘we’re’? (a)
The meaning stays the same, it’s just shorter to write and say.
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