Have you ever watched a student sound out the word “cake” like /k/ /a/ /k/ /e/? Or call “bike” /b/ /i/ /k/ /e/ with four separate sounds?
We get it. Silent letters don’t make much sense at first. Especially when you tell students, “Yes, the e is there, but... we don’t say it.” Cue the confusion. But this “silent” letter might just be one of the loudest in our phonics instruction.
Understanding long vowels and how they work with the help of silent e is a critical part of building fluency in reading and writing. It is one of those patterns that shift readers from just reading for accuracy to reading with understanding. Why? Because our readers have to hold on to meaning and make sure what they are seeing and saying makes sense as well as attend to the spelling patterns across words.
Let’s look at a lesson from Flying Start to Literacy: PHONICS™ here. This lesson focuses on the split digraph e, where two letters work together to represent one sound but they’re separated. For example, words like ‘joke, ‘robe, and ‘stone’. The silent e at the end changes the short vowel into a long one. That’s the kind of phonics patterns we want our learners to discover.
Did you notice that the lesson starts off with oral language development using the song “Ring Around the Rosie”? This activity will warm up and engage our learners’ awareness of rhythm, rhyme, and repetition. Did you notice the phonological awareness routines designed to help our early learners segment and blend words with long vowel sounds. Our learners are guided to stretch out and isolate sounds in words like ‘poke’, ‘phone, and ‘stone’. Then they engage in an activity that requires them to change a sound to make a new word. ‘Rose’ becomes ‘hose’, and ‘pole’ becomes ‘hole’. These small moves strengthen letter-sound connections in a meaningful way.
Once our learners hear it and see it, they’re ready to write it. They learn that a vowel-consonant-e pattern (like o_e in ‘rose’) signals the long vowel sound. Teachers use clear modeling and guided writing routines like, “Let’s write the word ‘globe.’ What vowel do we hear? What goes at the end that changes the ‘o’ to say its name?” These routines help students transfer their phonics knowledge to writing, which helps the learning stick.
Notice how the lesson also gives time to revisit and read known words and texts with the long /o/ sound. Decodable texts and mini-reading routines at the end of the lesson allow students to practice everything they just learned to ensure that what was taught is actually caught.
So, why does all this phonics work matter? It matters because long vowel patterns like silent e aren’t just about phonics and phonics rules. They’re about building and contributing to a flexible literacy processing system. When students understand how a pattern works across many words, they read more fluently and spell with greater accuracy. Learning silent e helps students make sense of common words like ‘these’, ‘time’, ‘name’, and ‘home’—high utility words that show up again and again in their reading. When we teach these patterns with intention, we give our learners the tools they’ll carry into every book they read and everything they write.
Now go back and take a look at our sample lesson here. As you revisit the lesson plan, take note of where and how long vowels and the silent e pattern are introduced. What did you notice about how the oral language activities connect to phonics goals? Where did explicit modeling happen and how did it look and sound? What routines give learners time to apply the pattern in writing and reading?
Reflect on where can you supplement your own routines to make long vowels and their silent partners more visible for your learners in reading and writing? - Nilaja Taylor