Silent e

 Silent e – some helpful ideas 

The idea of silent e is ubiquitous (almost) – 11 million results when I googled “silent e”. I looked at the first 30 of these. They fell into three categories – those that in some way showed silent e changing a short vowel into a long vowel (20 sites), those that listed other reasons for a silent e as well (7), and those that talked about adding a suffix (3). There were varying combinations of rules in the lists of “other reasons”.

I was challenged some time ago about my use of silent e. Is it a valid concept? Is it confusing for children? Does teaching “magic e” / “bossy e” / “sneaky e” / “silent e makes a vowel say its name” cause problems later, for example when children come to read words like give and have? If so, are those problems easily addressed? Or are the idea of a “split digraph” and “silent e” simply complementary ideas?

After much angst and soul searching, I have decided to keep the idea that “silent e makes the vowel say its name” as children find this an easy and useful concept, and one that they are fairly sure to meet at school. (Children enjoy this personification of letters, even though letters obviously don’t literally say anything.) I have added in a finger pointing to the letters in the word snake, for example, as they are pronounced, with a finger pointing at both the “a” and the “e” together as children hear the /A/ sound. This intuitively emphasises, illustrates, reinforces and supports the “split digraph”, “a_e” = /A/ in cake, etc. In the comic strips, I have always shown “a” linked to “e”.

These are complementary ideas, one explanation supports the other. So use what you find your child responds to best, perhaps both, and/or to clarify, explain or expand what they have learned at school.

Using “silent e makes a vowel say its name” also makes it easy to explain whether to use one or two consonants when adding a suffix that starts with a vowel. (See video 2 at http://successwithreading.com/level-9-8/.) 

With the other reasons for a silent e, I have decided not to refer directly to silent e in the material for the children, but there is a note for parents and teachers with background information that you can use if necessary. More on this next time.

The updated videos on “silent e makes the vowel say its name” are now at a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e.