Teaching the Sounds of -ed   Teaching the sounds of -ed at the end of the word indicates that something has happened in the past. The -ed ending is actually what we call a “morpheme” –  a unit of meaning. This concept can be a little tricky for our young readers as the -ed ending on a word has three sounds. When the -ed ending comes after the letter “t” or “d” it makes the /ed/ sound like in the words “melted”, “rented” and “printed”. If the word ends with the following sounds, the -ed ending will make the /t/ sound: p, k, s, f, th, ch, sh or x (e.g. jumped, fished). The /d/ sound for -ed is used