I am supposed to start teaching my 4 year old the silent E rule next week and would like to know if anyone has taught their toddlers/preschoolers this and if so how did you do it? My daughter was taught only letter sounds and picked the names up from starfall and also singing the alphabet song. She seems to automatically read long vowelled words correctly and only gets stuck on some, but I would prefer her to have a full grasp of how to read these words as she does try to sound out words herself and is not sure how to sound out long vowelled sounds. We have been working through The Parents Guide to Teaching Reading (though I have never shown her the book - I wrote out the words myself and taught her the rule with them) but am a little bit worried about long vowel teaching as she doesn’t even know what a vowel is yet let alone that they make more than one sound.
The vowel combinations shoudl be easier to teach than the silent E since she is used to me showing her diphthongs with a different sound (SH says “shhh” so AI can say “aye”)
Please could anyone who has taught this phonics and beyond tell me how they went about it. Thanks. And if you didn’t did your child pick it up by themselves?
I taught the silent e rule to my 4 year old in the following way.
I told my children that the e itself couldn’t talk but it still doesn’t like to be ignored. It holds a very long stick and if it’s friend the other vowel in the word chooses to ignore it it reaches over the top of the letter before it and whacks the vowel on the head. The vowel screams out it’s letter name instead of it’s letter sound and thus makes the word! To teach it to young children I would recommend cutting out some capital letters, lower case letters and a big long stick/club. Then play around with it making words. You could use the capital letters to represent the sound the vowel makes after it’s been hit on the head. It isn’t fool proof but that’s the English language for you! Also at the school my children go to now they don’t teach it at all they just teach the children that vowels can make a number of different sounds and you need to try then out until you find the one that makes the word. A says a as in cat, a as in was, a as in face, etc look up thrass if you want more info on this. I prefer this method of teaching that lots of letters make different sounds and teaching all possible sounds from the beginning. All the other rules like silent e have too many exceptions to actually call them rules. In saying all this I still teach the silent e because kids think it’s fun and they won’t forget it!
We call the vowels sticky letters that hold the words together. If you don’t have a vowel you don’t have a word. (That isn’t always true, but for now it is.)
“When two vowels go walking the first one does the talking, and the first one says it’s name.” Be aware that that rule does not always work.
Vowels are usually to scared to say their names, so they need a buddy to help them be brave. If a vowel is separated by 2 consonants the vowels are too far apart to help each other. The poor little “e” sits on the end of the word too scared to say anything.
We used this with several 3 year olds and it’s worked fine.
We presented the short vowel word versus the long word side by side with Jones Geniuses cards or My Montessori House videos to demonstrate it more so than explain it.such as, the word tap on one side of the card and tape on the other, kite/kite, rip/ripe, cap/cape, and so on. Silent E is also covered in Leapfrog’s Code Word Caper, I think they offer that one on Netflix. Best of luck!
Is the name of the book, “The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading”?
That book does teach vowels before silent e.
I’m going through the book with my oldest as written, and just recently started my youngest (almost 2) in at Lesson 27. For her, I use wooden letters to spell the words instead of having her read from the book.
But at age 4, I think as soon as he’s got a grasp on which letters are vowels and short and long sounds…a simple explanation should suffice, along with examples and practice.
Preschool Prep’s letter sounds DVD has a nice vowel and silent e segment.
Yes, that is the name of the book - I left out the initial sections as she knew all the letter sounds which meant she wasn’t taught vowels though I have mentioned them to her. I spent this weekend quickly going through them and she does know the names so I will start teaching long vowels tomorrow. Thanks for all the ideas.
I also skipped the letter lessons since both my kids knew them before we got the book.
How’s it been going? I haven’t heard anyone else here using it. I like it because I wanted a very thorough systematic phonics program. How does your daughter like it?
My son doesn’t love it. He enjoys the part where we read new words together (I read, we read, he reads). And I think that part is really effective. He doesn’t love the little stories to read afterward. I really believe its a mental block–he’ll read much longer from a book. But, for whatever reason, this feels more like “work” to him. And I guess it is. But whenever we are actively using a reading program with him, his reading explodes…so for now we just eat cookies while we do the lesson. I’d be interested to hear how you handle this (if it has been an issue).
I am not using The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading as they suggest at all. I am just using it as a way to know what phonics concepts to teach first and I also like the word lists in the book as they never show a word for which the phonics rule has not yet been taught.
I copied the word lists out into another book so that the print was much bigger and then taught the rule to my daughter and let her read the words. We only do 4-8 words a day. I do not read any of the stories in the book and the reason I don’t is that my daughter has a large sight word vocabulary and can read sentences that make more sense than the ones in the book simply because they do not have to be phonetically correct - the sentences in the book sound made up and they annoy me (let alone my daughter)
What I do is let her read from whichever reader we are reading that day (we do a small amount of reading every day for practice) and then point out any words that fit the rule she has done.
We started the silent E rule today and she seemed to get it though needed a fair amount of help and will need a lot more practice but it was the same when I taught her basic phonics with short vowel sounds so for now I am mostly telling her and then asking a bit and correcting if necessary. We also played Introductions where she went to big letters on the wall and introduced herself giving her name and then the letters replied what their name was. She thought it was very funny. I told her their surname was “vowel” since they are all vowels. She then asked me what B’s surname was so now she knows what consonants are too.
I’d be interested to hear how you handle this (if it has been an issue).