First grade students know there are different ways to make long vowel sounds in words. This week, we are reviewing the “magic e” or “silent e” rule. When working with short vowel or CVC words, adding a magic e or “silent e” to the end of the word usually changes the short vowel sound to the long vowel sound.
Throughout the week students will learn additional rules associated with silent e. For example when silent e comes after a g, the g changes to a /j/ sound. Similarly when a silent e comes after a c, it changes to an /s/ sound. Finally, we will build on our knowledge of suffix -ed and suffix -ing. We will discover, when added to a word that ends in magic e, you must drop the e and add the suffix.
As with many phonics and spelling rules, there are often exceptions. We’ll be on the look out for words that break these rules and will add them to our class “word jail.”