The 7 Jobs of Silent E: Phonics Rules for Teachers Episode 16

Learn about the 7 jobs of silent e and how to teach them to your students. Silent e, or magic e, does a whole lot more than make the vowel sound long. Learn how silent e changes the sound of s, c, and g, prevents words from ending with the letters u, i, and v, and the other jobs of silent e.

With 10 years of classroom experience, former teacher Martha Moore hosts the Phonics Rules for Teachers Podcast. Drawing from her personal journey, she shares insights on transitioning from traditional teaching methods to a phonics-centered approach and the impact it has on students' reading and writing.

Each week , Martha shares a simple phonics rule, strategy, or background information and how you can teach it in your classroom.

You can find the How the Heck to Teach 'Em supplementary resource to go along with this series here: https://www.myprimaryparadise.com/shop/phonics-rules-resources/

Transcript

Silent E does a whole lot more than make the vowel sound long. Today, we're going to look at the seven jobs of silent E. Welcome to episode 16 of Phonics Rules for Teachers and How the Heck to Teach Them. I'm Martha, and today we're going to take a look at the silent E syllable and all of the jobs of silent E.

A lot of people know that one of the jobs of silent E is to change the vowel sound from a short vowel sound to a long vowel sound. However, a lot of people stop right there and don’t teach the other six jobs. That’s right, six other jobs of silent E! Today, we're going to take a look at all of the different jobs of silent E and how to teach it to your students.

You likely already know that one of the jobs of silent E is to make a short vowel sound into a long vowel sound. For example, if we have the word “can” and we add silent E, then we have the word “cane.” This CVC or VCE spelling pattern is very common in the English language, and students are often taught this spelling pattern in the first year or two of school. Some examples of words would be “game,” “Pete,” “hide,” “note,” and “cute.” However, that’s not the only job of silent E.

Job Number Two: Silent E stops words in English from ending in U, I, or V. Words in English generally do not end with these letters. While there are some exceptions, typically words that we use that end in U, I, or V are borrowed from another language or are slang words. Typically, when we have a word that ends with one of these letters, we add a silent E to the end to prevent this from happening. Some examples of this are “give,” “have,” “glue,” and “pie.”

Number Three: Silent E makes C and G produce the soft sound. Most of the time, when we see an E next to a C or a G, those two letters produce their soft sound. C will then represent the S sound, and G will then represent the J sound. For example, we see this in words like “ice,” “race,” “cage,” and “stage.”

Number Four: Silent E makes TH produce its voiced sound. When we add a silent E to a word that ends with TH, it then spells its voiced sound. An example of this is “breath” versus “breathe” or “bath” versus “bathe.”

Number Five: Silent E can make an S produce its hard sound. When a silent E is next to the letter S, it often represents the Z sound, such as in “wise” or “raise.” This is not always the case, but it can represent this sound. It’s important to explain this to your students because there are words where we see an S next to a silent E, and the S produces the S sound. However, it’s helpful for them to know that if they read it with an S and it doesn’t make sense, to give it a try with a Z.

Number Six: Silent E shows that a word is not plural. Typically, words in English that end with a single S are doing so to show that they are plural. For example, “cats,” “spoons,” and “trees.” For this reason, sometimes we add a silent E after a single S in a word to show that it is not a plural. For example, “house” or “purse.”

Number Seven: We use silent E to clarify words. Sometimes, we add a silent E to a word that is a homophone to show that it is a different word with a different meaning. For example, “bye” and “by.”

Now you might be thinking, “That is a lot of jobs for silent E. How in the world do I teach them to my students?” I've got you covered! Let’s take a look at how to teach silent E to your students and in what order I would teach each job.

First, before teaching silent E, make sure your students have a firm background knowledge of these concepts. They need to understand open and closed syllables, and they should understand the difference between short vowels and long vowels. Having this background knowledge will make it so much easier for them to understand the silent E syllable.

Number Two: Start with the most common rule. That’s right, while silent E has seven jobs, you do not need to teach your students all seven jobs at the same time. In fact, it would be very confusing. So, start with the most common rule, which is that adding a silent E to a closed syllable word will make the vowel spell a long vowel sound. Be sure to explain the pattern of this syllable type that they’re looking for: CVC or VCE. That is the pattern of a silent E syllable.

Number Three: Compare closed syllables and silent E syllables. When you’re introducing silent E, start by writing closed syllable CVC or VC words that can easily be changed into a silent E word. Ask students to read the words. For example: “can,” “kit,” “hop,” and “us.” Then, rewrite the words with a silent E on the end and explain how in this syllable type, the vowel and the silent E work together to spell a long vowel sound. So now, you can read the words together: “cane,” “kite,” “hope,” and “use.” Comparing these two syllable types will help your students see the pattern of the silent E syllable very clearly, and it builds off the background knowledge that they already have.

Number Four: Practice, practice, practice. In my last video, I shared 12 strategies that I like to use with any new syllable type, and those are the strategies that I use with a silent E. Things like using my daily sound drill, backwards decoding, decodable text, word mapping, the magic word game, and targeted journal entries. If you would like an in-depth look at all of those different practice strategies, you can see that in my last video where I shared in-depth how to do all of those strategies with your students.

Once your students have had time to practice with that first job of silent E, now it’s time to introduce some more jobs of silent E. The next job of silent E that I like to introduce is that silent E can change C and G to soft sounds and S to a hard sound. You can explain this by writing some words on the board that follow this pattern. So, you could write, for example, the word “ice,” “cage,” and “wise” on the board. Have them take a look at the words. They can even try to pronounce those words with the sounds that they’re expecting, so “ike,” “kage,” “wisse,” and they will quickly see that those don’t sound like real words. You can explain to them that when a silent E is next to these letters, it changes their sound from a soft or a hard sound. Have them spend time practicing with this as well before you introduce any more jobs of silent E.

The next job of silent E that I like to introduce is that silent E prevents words in English from ending with a U, an I, or a V. There are, in fact, some exceptions to this rule, but most of those words that are exceptions, such as “ski” or “flu” or “koi,” are words that are either shortened words from other words or they are words that we have borrowed from another language. I do always teach my students that the one exception to this is U and I, because U and I are special. Here’s how you can introduce this. Write the word “have” on the whiteboard and ask students to read the word. They might read it properly and read the word “have” if they’ve already seen that word before. You can then write the word “give” on the board as well. Have them take a look at those words and ask them what they notice is different than the other silent E words they’ve looked at already. Students will hopefully quickly realize that those vowels are representing a short vowel sound even though there’s a silent E. Then you can introduce that rule that words in English don’t typically end in I, U, or V. From there, you can show them words like “glue” and “pie.” While words like “glue” and “pie” don’t follow the CVCe pattern, they still include a silent E that is doing its job. From there, you can practice these types of words with your students until they are comfortable to move on to the next job of silent E.

You don’t always have to do these in a linear order. You might then move on to vowel teams and then come back to the next job of silent E, and that is totally fine. If your students are just learning silent E, this next rule I would wait until a little later when they’ve learned some of the spelling patterns that this rule is generally associated with, such as R-controlled or vowel teams. But the next job of silent E to teach your students is the singular rule, and that is that silent E is added to the end of words to prevent them from being confused with plural words. So, when you teach your students the OW sound and they’re looking at words like “house” or “mouse” or OO like in “goose” or UR as in “purse,” you can take the time to show them this rule. You can remind them about silent E and say, “Remember we said silent E has seven jobs? This is one of the jobs of silent E.” To make sure that when we look at the word “house,” we know we’re talking about one house. When we look at the word “purse,” we know we’re talking about one purse.

And the seventh job of silent E I would introduce is when you’re talking about homophones or if words that are read the same but are spelled differently come up and they include words with this silent E on the end. For example, “by” and “bye.” You can explain to students that sometimes we add a silent E to words just so we can distinguish them from other words that sound the same but have a different meaning.

And finally, be sure to continue to review the silent E syllable type as you’re reading and writing together. Silent E is often part of multisyllabic words, so it’s really great for students to continue to practice this as the year goes on and as they grow as readers and writers. All of these concepts build upon each other, so the more you practice, the better for your students.

There you have it! Those are the seven jobs of silent E and how to teach them in your classroom. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below and I’m happy to answer them for you. And if you want resources to go along with all of the tools and strategies that I’m sharing here, you can find them in my How the Heck to Teach It resource, which is linked in the description. Thank you so much for joining me for this week’s episode! Don’t forget to like and subscribe to Phonics Rules for Teachers and How the Heck to Teach Them. See you next time!