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Silent Letter thoughts, philosophy, etc


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One of my YouTube viewers asked me a few questions about silent letters.  I have strong thoughts about teaching "igh" as a letter team, not as i and a silent gh, because my students learn it better that way and I don't believe the gh in words like high and light are truly silent, they are working together with the i to make a long vowel sound.

But, for most of the rest of the things typically taught as "silent letters," like kn and gn and mb, I don't have strong feelings or thoughts because however I've described them, my students don't have a problem with it.

I am going to keep teaching/explaining how most people teach them and the history behind them (interesting for each sound, I have several different reference books such as "The ABCs and All Their Tricks" and dictionaries and other things that explains this) but wonder what thoughts and ideas you all had?

Diane McGuinness thinks there should not be any silent letters taught at all, as explained here:

https://theliteracyblog.com/2011/11/26/silent-letters/

And most dictionary people explain the opposite, just showing them all as silent.

I do teach silent e as silent, but with some students, explain it more as a letter team working with the vowel to keep it long and have them go back and forth: cap/cape/cap.  I also explain other cases of silent e and how u is keeping the g hard in certain words, some people just teach it as silent.

For my older students especially, I go more into the word history of things. 

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1 hour ago, 8FillTheHeart said:

I like the way SSRW teaches gh. The song goes Mr GH (he is dressed like a ghost) running all around. Silent in the middle. At the end says a funny sound.  Not perfect has worked well for my kids.

That sounds like a good way of teaching it.

GH is a tricky one.  I was just reading up on it in "The ABCs and All Their Tricks."  Evidently, it used to have a sound similar to the german ch as in "ich," and instead of simply dropping the sound, it was changed in a variety of ways, including at the end of a word to "F" in a few words...

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We teach magic e not silent e.  It has the magic powers to change the vowel sound in the word.

I do teach k in knee as silent and also the h in what etc but that depends on pronunciation.  If kids are interested I explain how words like cupboard were said differently in the past and people got lazy.  It can help to say the words the old way to help remember the spelling.

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6 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

We teach magic e not silent e.  It has the magic powers to change the vowel sound in the word.

I do teach k in knee as silent and also the h in what etc but that depends on pronunciation.  If kids are interested I explain how words like cupboard were said differently in the past and people got lazy.  It can help to say the words the old way to help remember the spelling.

I like that, magic e, that is a good description that seems like it would help students struggling with the concept.

Yes, the more you explain, especially to older students, the better they remember.

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I was taught, and subsequently taught my children, that kn is "two letter /n/ that we use at the beginning of words" and gn is "two letter /n/ used at the beginning or the end of words". So they were taught as letter teams just like three letter I or igh. The only silent letters I remember being taught were b at the end of words like lamb, thumb and bomb and p like in pneumonia and pneumatic. I'm sure there are more but those are the only ones that stick out in my memory.

I was also taught Silent E's had 5 jobs it could be doing at the end of the word. It could be there to make the vowel say it's name or long sound. It could be there the soften C or G. It could be there because English words do not end in U or V (blue or have) It could be there because every syllable must have a vowel (little or table) or it could be a No Job E or and Odd Job E which just means that there isn't any easily discernible reason it has a silent E. It might be an old English spelling (are) or it might be to prevent the word from ending in s and looking like a plural (please).

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4 hours ago, sweet2ndchance said:

I was taught, and subsequently taught my children, that kn is "two letter /n/ that we use at the beginning of words" and gn is "two letter /n/ used at the beginning or the end of words". So they were taught as letter teams just like three letter I or igh. The only silent letters I remember being taught were b at the end of words like lamb, thumb and bomb and p like in pneumonia and pneumatic. I'm sure there are more but those are the only ones that stick out in my memory.

I was also taught Silent E's had 5 jobs it could be doing at the end of the word. It could be there to make the vowel say its name or long sound. It could be there the soften C or G. It could be there because English words do not end in U or V (blue or have) It could be there because every syllable must have a vowel (little or table) or it could be a No Job E or and Odd Job E which just means that there isn't any easily discernible reason it has a silent E. It might be an old English spelling (are) or it might be to prevent the word from ending in s and looking like a plural (please).

I love the way Spalding teaches those things. 🙂

There are five phonograms that Mrs. Spalding says shouldn't be introduced until fourth grade and above: eu (as in Europe); pn (pneumonia); rh (rhinoceros); qu (mosquito, with a superscript 2 above it); and x (xylophone). 

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15 hours ago, Ellie said:

I love the way Spalding teaches those things. 🙂

There are five phonograms that Mrs. Spalding says shouldn't be introduced until fourth grade and above: eu (as in Europe); pn (pneumonia); rh (rhinoceros); qu (mosquito, with a superscript 2 above it); and x (xylophone). 

I can't believe you love the way Spalding teaches. :biggrin:

That is interesting that she recommends waiting until 4th grade with those.  

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On November 21, 2018 at 3:28 PM, ElizabethB said:

For my older students especially, I go more into the word history of things. 

Exactly. The amount you explain has to fit the readiness and need of the child.

On November 21, 2018 at 3:28 PM, ElizabethB said:

Diane McGuinness thinks there should not be any silent letters taught at all

Toward the end of that blog post the author goes into what is actually a bigger controversy. They talk about it on the SPELL-talk listserve, you so you might like to join there. There are people who actually put great stock in their opinions about how we ought to think through words. I usually just GLOSS that, because it's not relevant to my world or my child.

On November 21, 2018 at 3:28 PM, ElizabethB said:

I do teach silent e as silent, but with some students, explain it more as a letter team working with the vowel to keep it long and have them go back and forth: cap/cape/cap.  I also explain other cases of silent e and how u is keeping the g hard in certain words, some people just teach it as silent.

To me, that's silent e gig would just be a matter of imprecision. And if your standard is what works for your students, you made it work. If the standard is what is coherent, consistent across a system, and therefore what should be taught to all teachers to work with all severity levels, obviously it's not as precise and we'd like to be. There are much more helpful ways to explain final e, yes. What you're describing with silent e is how many mainstream education systems doing phonics taught it for years. When we move over to intervention, obviously we're needing more consistency and precision because less is left to inference.

The latter part, with the hard vs. soft g, to my mind, goes back to the "need to know" question. Obviously it's always good to have the info if the dc asks or to be able to present it if it would engage the student and be interesting to them to have that discussion. Iirc, with my dd (and probably with my ds) I did in fact present the idea that /k/, /g/, etc. had front and back versions, but I mainly focused on the /i/ and left the other to default. English spelling is already exceptionally complicated.

I think we can differentiate our own studies and realizations and mastery from that of our students and enrich ourselves to be ready with the info they need without overwhelming them with info they don't.

Edited by PeterPan
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  • 2 weeks later...

I think it confuses the majority of younger kids to learn anything except that they're silent, honestly. (Not the igh stuff - that's a letter team, but combos like pn or mb or kn or so forth). And I don't think it makes sense to hold those words back from kids before a certain age... they're going to see words like knife and lamb and such. I also think it doesn't kill a kid to learn that "there is a longer explanation, but for now, just because" as long as you're in context with an overall phonics approach and you're willing to answer the kids who actually are curious and need an explanation.

But I'm definitely not an expert in this arena.

Edited by Farrar
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20 hours ago, kiwik said:

Am I the only one who thinks all these rules makes something quite simple into something incredibly complex?

Well, English spelling is pretty complex, because of all the different languages that our words come from. Some spelling/reading methods make it more complicated than it needs to be, IMHO, which is why I like Spalding. It doesn't teach silent letters, other than final silent e. It teaches phonograms without comment; during the spelling lesson, when a letter doesn't say its usual sound (e.g., lamb, where the b actually is, you know, silent), the children just underline the b to indicate the fact that it's different (Spalding doesn't teach mb as a phonogram).

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15 hours ago, Farrar said:

I think it confuses the majority of younger kids to learn anything except that they're silent, honestly. (Not the igh stuff - that's a letter team, but combos like pn or mb or kn or so forth). And I don't think it makes sense to hold those words back from kids before a certain age... they're going to see words like knife and lamb and such. I also think it doesn't kill a kid to learn that "there is a longer explanation, but for now, just because" as long as you're in context with an overall phonics approach and you're willing to answer the kids who actually are curious and need an explanation.

But I'm definitely not an expert in this arena.

I've never had kids have a problem learning kn, gn, I call those silent but note that they occur together.  

But, with silent e to make the vowel long, I do call it silent but maybe some of my students would do better with it if it was called something else, I've had many students struggle with it.  Or, maybe it's just hard after months of short vowels... 

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8 minutes ago, ElizabethB said:

I've never had kids have a problem learning kn, gn, I call those silent but note that they occur together.  

But, with silent e to make the vowel long, I do call it silent but maybe some of my students would do better with it if it was called something else, I've had many students struggle with it.  Or, maybe it's just hard after months of short vowels... 

When I teach kn, I call it "/n/ used at the beginning of a word." When I teach gn, I call it "/n/ used at the end of a word." If gn is used at the beginning of a word (rarely), I have the children underline the g twice, to show that it is not a common usage of g. In both cases, I don't need to use the word "silent." 🙂

As you know, Spalding doesn't focus on long or short vowels. It teaches all the sounds that all of the phonograms make, with any protocols that apply (e.g., Rule 4: a, e, o, i, and u may say their second sounds at the end of a short word or syllable). The five reasons for final silent e are taught (to help a single vowel say its second sound; to help c and g say their second sounds; following  u and v, because English words don't end with u or v; and the no-job e). In the context of the spelling lessons, children don't have problems learning these things. 🙂

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1 hour ago, Ellie said:

When I teach kn, I call it "/n/ used at the beginning of a word." When I teach gn, I call it "/n/ used at the end of a word." If gn is used at the beginning of a word (rarely), I have the children underline the g twice, to show that it is not a common usage of g. In both cases, I don't need to use the word "silent." 🙂

As you know, Spalding doesn't focus on long or short vowels. It teaches all the sounds that all of the phonograms make, with any protocols that apply (e.g., Rule 4: a, e, o, i, and u may say their second sounds at the end of a short word or syllable). The five reasons for final silent e are taught (to help a single vowel say its second sound; to help c and g say their second sounds; following  u and v, because English words don't end with u or v; and the no-job e). In the context of the spelling lessons, children don't have problems learning these things. 🙂

Most students who have had Spalding are good readers and spellers, but I get a fair number of boys and a few girls taught with Spalding who have problems sounding out words, they get confused with all the different choices and never achieve a good level of automaticity in their sounding out of words.  (Generally they come to me at age 8 - 10 after a few years of Spalding.)  However, they have no guessing habits to overcome, a few months of Blend Phonics or Phonics Pathways fixes them right up.  My remedial students from the public schools take a lot of nonsense words and a longer time to overcome their guessing habits.

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21 minutes ago, ElizabethB said:

Most students who have had Spalding are good readers and spellers, but I get a fair number of boys and a few girls taught with Spalding who have problems sounding out words, they get confused with all the different choices and never achieve a good level of automaticity in their sounding out of words.  (Generally they come to me at age 8 - 10 after a few years of Spalding.)  However, they have no guessing habits to overcome, a few months of Blend Phonics or Phonics Pathways fixes them right up.  My remedial students from the public schools take a lot of nonsense words and a longer time to overcome their guessing habits.

Just out of curiosity, when these children come to you, have they been taught at home by parents who faithfully taught the Spalding Method?

Often, back in the day when I used to do more curriculum counseling IRL, people whose dc were struggling with Spalding were doing lots of adjustments to the Method rather than actually following the Method.  The first time I had that conversation, it turned out that the mother was using a public school spelling text and applying Spalding rules (or, rather, trying to apply Spalding rules); IOW, they were not doing Spalding. She complained to me that her dc did not do nearly as well on their standardized tests as she thought they should. After we talked, she went back and studied her manual again, and the next year taught Spalding; her dc's test scores were off the charts in spelling that time. 🙂

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19 hours ago, Melissa in Australia said:

and igh is three letter i

Exactly. 🙂

We do...

c : /k/ /s/ c followed by e, i, or y says /s/ (yes, I say that whole thing when teaching c)
ck: /k/ used after a single vowel that doesn't say its name
kn: /n/ used at the beginning of a word
gn: /n/ the two-letter
igh: /I/ the three letter (I say the sound first)
dge: /j/ used after a single vowel that doesn't say its name
oe: /O/ of toe
oa: /O/ of boat
wr: /r/ the two-letter (r is just /r/)

 

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On 12/5/2018 at 11:02 AM, ElizabethB said:

But, with silent e to make the vowel long, I do call it silent but maybe some of my students would do better with it if it was called something else, I've had many students struggle with it.  Or, maybe it's just hard after months of short vowels... 

 

I don't think it's unusual for beginning readers to kind of hit a wall when they first learn about silent E :-).

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On 12/5/2018 at 11:02 AM, ElizabethB said:

But, with silent e to make the vowel long, I do call it silent but maybe some of my students would do better with it if it was called something else, I've had many students struggle with it.  Or, maybe it's just hard after months of short vowels... 

And also as you know, Spalding only teaches final silent e--single vowel, single consonant, final silent e. Maybe that distinction would help.

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On December 5, 2018 at 12:39 PM, Ellie said:

Just out of curiosity, when these children come to you, have they been taught at home by parents who faithfully taught the Spalding Method?

Often, back in the day when I used to do more curriculum counseling IRL, people whose dc were struggling with Spalding were doing lots of adjustments to the Method rather than actually following the Method.  The first time I had that conversation, it turned out that the mother was using a public school spelling text and applying Spalding rules (or, rather, trying to apply Spalding rules); IOW, they were not doing Spalding. She complained to me that her dc did not do nearly as well on their standardized tests as she thought they should. After we talked, she went back and studied her manual again, and the next year taught Spalding; her dc's test scores were off the charts in spelling that time. 🙂

Yes, they almost all had older female siblings who are reading above grade level and read and spell well.  One also had a younger girl sibling who read and spelled better than him.  The boys get this dear in the headlights look when reading and read at 30 WPM or less, and they were all 8 to 10 years old, you should be reading 30+ WPM by then.  After a few months of practice with a good phonics program, almost all were reading above 30 WPM.  There have been 2 girls with this same pattern, but the majority were boys with siblings who learned well with Spalding and mom understood it  and taught it well.  (It can be confusing at first.)

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I have one kid that did very well with Spalding and she took off quickly and decoded well above grade level and spells really well from it  and two kids that just had more difficulty with both reading and spelling because it was too much at once. They did have the issue ElizabethB describes. They did it in a classroom that used it correctly. I do like the way Spalding does phonograms and describes things though so even though what I am using now calls the gh a silent gh I just say what does the phonogram igh say instead when things like that come up and I still use some of the sayings that Ellie described. 

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On 12/4/2018 at 3:04 AM, kiwik said:

Am I the only one who thinks all these rules makes something quite simple into something incredibly complex?

I thought that way at first. But I also have a kid who's a real "rule follower", and the silent e drove him batty (until we came across Spalding -- though we did add our own "informal" rule 6, which is non-plural words than end in an s sound, so the silent e helps us know it's not plural, like house, mouse, noise, etc. instead of calling all of those "no job" e's). He couldn't stand words like give and have when the only rule he'd been taught was the rule about making a first vowel say its name. He just hated it. It was a constant pitfall in his reading. Same with lots of other "standard" phonics stuff. Once I gave him rules, he was a much, much happier child, and went from struggling with basic readers to reading quality chapter books in about four months. My next child, on the other hand, is completely overwhelmed by all the rules and needs something else. To each their own. 🙂

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On ‎11‎/‎22‎/‎2018 at 11:45 PM, Ellie said:

I love the way Spalding teaches those things. 🙂

There are five phonograms that Mrs. Spalding says shouldn't be introduced until fourth grade and above: eu (as in Europe); pn (pneumonia); rh (rhinoceros); qu (mosquito, with a superscript 2 above it); and x (xylophone). 

Say what now? Why in the world would it be considered reasonable to not teach 'q' or 'x' until 4th grade? That's really dumb.
In English, q is always followed by u, so it only makes since that 'qu', should be taught in in K or 1st. You can teach qu when you teach digraphs with _h: sh, th, ph, etc.
The letter x is used in the end of many short, easy to read words. It doesn't occur in the front of enough elementary-level words to make it worth waiting. X-ray, Xylophone, and Xerox are the X-first-words my kids learned to read when they were toddlers. It gave them the frame work to read every other x-first word that they've encountered sense then, which in all honesty haven't been many.

I liked (and used) Spalding for handwriting and spelling notebook/rules once my kids were reading fluently, but I can't take seriously any method that advocates drawing reading instruction out into a 4+ year sequence. That's absurd. I never read the rest of the Writing Road to Reading so this 'wait until 4th grade to teach q and x business is news to me.

 

Edited by Gil
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3 hours ago, Gil said:

Say what now? Why in the world would it be considered reasonable to not teach 'q' or 'x' until 4th grade? That's really dumb.
In English, q is always followed by u, so it only makes since that 'qu', should be taught in in K or 1st. You can teach qu when you teach digraphs with _h: sh, th, ph, etc.
The letter x is used in the end of many short, easy to read words. It doesn't occur in the front of enough elementary-level words to make it worth waiting. X-ray, Xylophone, and Xerox are the X-first-words my kids learned to read when they were toddlers. It gave them the frame work to read every other x-first word that they've encountered sense then, which in all honesty haven't been many.

I liked (and used) Spalding for handwriting and spelling notebook/rules once my kids were reading fluently, but I can't take seriously any method that advocates drawing reading instruction out into a 4+ year sequence. That's absurd. I never read the rest of the Writing Road to Reading so this 'wait until 4th grade to teach q and x business is news to me.

 

I think you must have misunderstood what I wrote. I'm pretty sure I didn't say that Spalding doesn't teach "q" or "x" until 4th grade. o_0 Also, (1) Spalding doesn't draw reading instruction into a 4-yr sequence, (2) if you taught Spalding, surely you would remember that q is taught as qu (/kw/) as part of the first 26 phonograms, and (3) what I said is that the second sound of "qu" *used in the word "mosquito"* and the second sound of "x" (and "X-ray" doesn't have the same sound as xylophone, so that wouldn't be included anyway) are taught later because they are so rare. If a child of any age met one of those words in his reading or spelling of course I would teach it at that point, and it would take only a second.

Spalding doesn't teach digraphs. It teaches those phonograms, but it doesn't separate them into a category out of context with spelling and reading.

It's too bad that you didn't read the whole manual. You missed a whole bunch, which is why you misunderstood what I wrote.

Edited by Ellie
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5 hours ago, Ellie said:

I think you must have misunderstood what I wrote. I'm pretty sure I didn't say that Spalding doesn't teach "q" or "x" until 4th grade.

Sorry, I did misunderstand (and even upon re-reading your comment I don't get the correct understanding from what you said. Its very possible that I'm just zonked,) but I'm perfectly happy to be mistaken in this instance. Your follow up post makes a lot more sense then the way that I read your first post so I'm sure that the misunderstanding is mine. As far as I remember Spalding teaches by phonograms so when you said there were phonograms that don't get taught until 4th grade, I took that at face value and misunderstood. My apologies.

o_0 Also, (1) Spalding doesn't draw reading instruction into a 4-yr sequence, (2) if you taught Spalding, surely you would remember that q is taught as qu (/kw/) as part of the first 26 phonograms, and (3) what I said is that the second sound of "qu" *used in the word "mosquito"* and the second sound of "x" (and "X-ray" doesn't have the same sound as xylophone, so that wouldn't be included anyway)  are taught later because they are so rare. If a child of any age met one of those words in his reading or spelling of course I would teach it at that point, and it would take only a second. Actually, In my local/regional accent,  the first sound in X-ray and Xylophone are said the same way: "eks-ray" and "eks-zie-lophone". My son has been saying for a couple of years now that it's wrong, but locally no one knows what he's talking about. Or rather enough folks are not changing their life-long pronunciation to appease him and it's hardly like that word comes up regularly.

Spalding doesn't teach digraphs. It teaches those phonograms, but it doesn't separate them into a category out of context with spelling and reading.

 

It's too bad that you didn't read the whole manual. You missed a whole bunch, which is why you misunderstood what I wrote. Nah, not really. I did misunderstand you, and I'll cop to that easily, and with apologies, but The Boys were reading fluently and well above grade level before we started Spalding so I only read and focused on what I thought we needed--which was just Ch. 1 where she covers handwriting and spelling and the Ayers Lists from the back of the book. I didn't consider studying the rest of the book a good use of my time and I still don't. Even it means I'll occasionally misunderstand a comment on WTM.

 

If Ms. Spalding truly does feel that some phonograms shouldn't be taught until 4th grade or beyond, then I still disagree with her.

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2 hours ago, Gil said:

 

If Ms. Spalding truly does feel that some phonograms shouldn't be taught until 4th grade or beyond, then I still disagree with her.

FTR, we say "/z/ylophone." We say "X-ray" (eks-ray).

Not having Mrs. Spalding's voluminous knowledge of phonics and spelling and whatnot, I bow to her authority. But I'm sure she would say the same thing: Those phonograms do not commonly show up in materials written for children under eight or nine years old; however, most children would be able to figure out words that have those sounds, and teachers can feel free to introduce those phonograms whenever they want. Also, I think most phonics instruction materials don't teach them to very young children, either.

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On 12/5/2018 at 6:22 PM, Ellie said:

Well, English spelling is pretty complex, because of all the different languages that our words come from. Some spelling/reading methods make it more complicated than it needs to be, IMHO, which is why I like Spalding. It doesn't teach silent letters, other than final silent e. It teaches phonograms without comment; during the spelling lesson, when a letter doesn't say its usual sound (e.g., lamb, where the b actually is, you know, silent), the children just underline the b to indicate the fact that it's different (Spalding doesn't teach mb as a phonogram).

I go with the kid pronounces the word wrong, I say that word is said ---, the kid laughs and next time says it correctly.  If they ask and I happen to know I explain why.

We have to look things often.  I have always known the difference between hat and hate but never realised there was an actual rule about it.

 

Edited by kiwik
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