Silent e — often called magic e or split digraph — is the pattern where a final e changes the vowel before it from short to long. The e itself is never pronounced: it works at a distance, turning 'cap' into 'cape' and 'hop' into 'hope'. It is usually the first spelling pattern where children must look beyond the letter in front of them to decide how a word sounds.
How it is taught
Most programmes introduce silent e by contrast rather than in isolation: children read a short-vowel word, then the same word with an e added, and hear the vowel change. Minimal pairs — cap/cape, kit/kite, not/note — make the job of the e audible before it is explained. Reading the pair aloud comes before spelling it, because hearing the difference is what the rule depends on.
Where children get stuck
- Children often sound out the e itself — 'cake-uh' — because every letter has meant a sound until now.
- Words like 'have', 'give' and 'come' end in e without a long vowel, and are best taught as exceptions to be memorised rather than decoded.
- A child who reads silent-e words correctly may still omit the e when spelling, since nothing in the sound signals it.
Word list
All 20 words here are single-syllable, so they are read and spelled whole.