The most common letter in English, and often the one doing the least: short /e/, long /iː/, schwa, or completely silent.
Letter sounds
e LETTER_E_01
Useful pattern · Medium reliability · Very common · Early · Reading
/e/ short e: bed, pen, wet
/iː/ long e: me, she, these
/ə/ schwa: taken, problem, listen
Silent: cake, have, little
Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 2: CVC Word Mastery · Skill 6: Magic e · Skill 7: Open & Closed Syllables + Y · Skill 12: Multisyllable Decoding
Child explanation
E is the busiest letter. It says /e/ in bed, its name in me, and nothing at all at the end of cake.
The rule
Short /e/ in a closed syllable. Long /iː/ in an open syllable. Silent at the end of a word, where it is doing one of five other jobs. Schwa in an unstressed syllable.
What is really going on
E is the highest-frequency letter in written English largely because of its silent uses. Word-finally it is almost never pronounced; it is instead marking a long vowel (cake), softening c or g (face, large), preventing a word from ending in v or u (have, blue), supporting a consonant-le syllable (little), or simply distinguishing a word from one without it (or/ore).
Position in the word
Middle of a word — Short in a closed syllable. For example: bed, pen, desk, help.
End of a word — Silent in a single-syllable word, doing one of the silent-e jobs. For example: cake, face, have, little.
One-syllable words — Long when it is the only vowel and ends the word. For example: me, he, she, we, be.
Unstressed syllable — Schwa, or dropped entirely in casual speech. For example: taken, problem, listen, garden.
Made-up words that follow the rule. A child who reads these has the pattern rather than the vocabulary.
fesk, nelp, brede
Exceptions
e in the -ed suffix: jumped, played, wanted. The e is usually not pronounced at all; -ed adds /t/ or /d/ unless the root already ends in t or d.
e as part of a team: tree, bread, they, eight, her. The letter is not acting alone.
Contrast pairs
pet versus Pete — Closed versus silent e.
bed versus bead — Single e versus the ea team.
her versus hen — R-controlled versus closed.
Common reading mistakes
cake: a child reads /keɪkeɪ/ or /keɪkə/, where the word is /keɪk/. Final silent e pronounced.
bed: a child reads /bɪd/, where the word is /bed/. Short e and short i not distinguished.
Do not teach it like this
"A silent e at the end makes the vowel long."
That is only the commonest of silent e's five jobs. It is not what the e is doing in have, give, love, house, please, little, chance or bridge — and a child who applies the long-vowel rule to have reads /heɪv/.
"A final e is nearly always silent. Sometimes it makes the vowel long, and sometimes it is there for another reason."
Teacher note
Short e is the short vowel children confuse most, usually with short i. Contrast pin/pen, bit/bet, lid/led by ear before reading them. When you introduce magic e, introduce have, give and love within the same fortnight — not as exceptions to be apologised for, but as the evidence that final e has more than one job.