Explaining Split Vowel Spellings
It was, oh, so tempting to title this Page Explaining Silent-e because then everyone would know exactly what the topic was. But doing so would be giving in to the strained logic underlying the concept of a silent letter. All letters are silent; letters don’t make sounds, letters are quiet symbols that represent sounds.
If you tell an adult friend that a painting speaks to you, you’re communicating something to him about the impact of that particular painting on your thinking. If you tell a young child a painting speaks to you, he’ll think you’re a little weird, but if you keep on saying it, he’ll probably start trying to hear something coming out of that canvas too.
The point is, if you’re trying to teach a young child phonics, drop the use of the term silent whenever you run into something the creator of the curriculum you’re using couldn’t explain. The h in ghost isn’t silent. Well, actually it is, but so are all the other letters. Instead, just explain to any young child that the gh in ghost, ghastly, ghoul and ghetto is just a digraph representing the /g/ sound. For a five year old, just underline the gh and tell him it’s the /g/ sound at the beginning of some words.
Now what about silent-e? If the e is not silent, what is it, in kid logic, that is? Here’s a better way to explain to a young child the vowel spellings in words like save, theme, bite, cone and cube.
First, show them a words like toe, foe, doe, hoe and woe, or names like Joe, Moe and Poe. It only takes two or three examples. Underline the oe in each of the examples you’ve chosen and explain that it is the /oe/ sound. Note the emphasis on the word “it” in the last sentence. Do not say these are the /oe/ sound. The oe is a digraph, one unit, so always refer to a digraph as one thing, one unit, as an it, not as a plural.
Now show your child the word note and explain that we could have spelled note like this: noet. If we had, it would have made perfect sense. Then tell your child that a long time ago a guy wrote a huge dictionary because people were spelling words all sorts of unusual ways (sort of like kids do now in emails, as in “How r u?, I’m gr8!”) and that this guy had one problem. He really, really, really (this is actually sort of true, by the way) liked to put the letter e at the end of a word whenever he got the chance.
Here’s a few examples to make the point to your child. He could have gone with ar (like car) but no, he had to go with are (making it look like it should rhyme with share.) He could have gone with wer (like her) but went with were, forever condemning kids to confuse it with where. Have and love and sleeve and every other word ending in the /v/ sound got an e tacked on even if it did make have look like save and love look like cove. It goes on and on, but you get the idea. Just relay enough of this to your child to make the point.
Then explain that when he saw all the words with oe (and ae and ie and ue) in them, he couldn’t resist, and whenever another sound followed oe, he split the vowel spelling and put the e at the end of the word.
All this means is that your child has to learn to recognize the Split Vowel Spelling in words, and to do so all he needs is some practice looking for it. Incidentally, I tell all my young clients that this is the “o-e” spelling, pronounced “o dash e” and they quickly learn what I mean. I simply tell them that the dash is where the ending sound gets tucked into the word.
This is all kid logic. They buy it and understand it. In fact, the first child to ever use the worksheets using this concept, when asked to underline the digraph in note, underlined the letter “o” and then the letter “e” and in a stroke of creativity, he then hooked them together with what he called a smilie. I’ve encouraged this with every young client since, and they all understand it.
Here are two items that you can download as PDF files to help instill the above concepts. The first is a very short story for young children who are confused about the concept. Just have your child read it and make corrections when he misses a split vowel spelling. The second is a game that you can play with your child to help him build awareness of the split vowel spellings.
Download the Split Vowel Spelling game
If you try this, you’ll find that your child understands it, and you’ll no longer be confusing him with the confusing concept of a silent letter. Struggling readers are in the habit of ignoring letters and even whole syllables in words all the time. Don’t encourage them by telling them they should ignore some of them, which is exactly what the terminology silent letter does.
Next: Adding Suffixes to Split Vowels, or return to the OnTrack Home Page