i_e

Bike, time, nine, ride. Highly reliable, with give and live as the two exceptions children meet earliest.

Magic e / silent e

i_e MAGIC_E_I_01

Strong rule · High reliability · Very common · Early · Reading and spelling

• /aɪ/ long i: bike, time, nine

Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 6: Magic e

Child explanation

Kit becomes kite. The e is quiet and the i says its name.

The rule

I, one consonant, then a silent e gives long i, /aɪ/.

What is really going on

Highly consistent. Give and live are the notable breaks, both cases where the final e exists to prevent a word-final v rather than to mark the vowel — which also explains why live has two pronunciations depending on whether it is the verb or the adjective.

Examples

Easy examples

bike, time, nine, ride, kite

More examples

side, wide, hide, line, fine, mine, pine, life, wife, smile, while, write, white, drive, slide

Pseudo-words

Made-up words that follow the rule. A child who reads these has the pattern rather than the vocabulary.

shime, blide, frine, glipe

Exceptions

• give and live: give, live, olive, active. The e is preventing a word-final v.
• fire, wire, hire: fire, wire, hire, tired. The r changes the vowel; these are r-controlled, not plain long i.

Contrast pairs

• kit versus kite
• rid versus ride
• fin versus fine
• bit versus bite
• live versus like — Both look like i_e; only one is.

Decodable sentences

• I like to ride my bike five times a week.
• She had a wide white smile.
• It is time to write nine lines.

Teacher note

Teach after a_e is secure. Give and live are frequent enough that they should be named the same week, and the explanation is satisfying rather than arbitrary: English does not let a word end in v, so an e has to go there whether or not the vowel is long.

Learn these first

• The five short vowels — a e i o u in a closed syllable — A single vowel with a consonant after it and nothing else is usually short. This is the rule that makes CVC words decodable.
• a_e — a_e — The commonest magic e pattern and the most reliable. Cake, name, made, late — long a with a silent e two letters on.

Related rules

• Magic e — v_e — A vowel, one consonant, then e. The e says nothing and the vowel says its name. Reliable — as long as the child knows what it does not cover.
• IGH — igh — Three letters, one long i. Almost always followed by t, and one of the few places gh can be predicted with confidence.
• The letter Y — y — The clearest case in English of position deciding sound. Y is a consonant at the start of a word and a vowel everywhere else — and which vowel depends on how many syllables the word has.
• The letter I — i — Short /ɪ/ almost everywhere, long /aɪ/ before silent e and in a handful of very common families that look closed but are not.

• Previous in Magic e / silent e: a_e — a_e — The commonest magic e pattern and the most reliable. Cake, name, made, late — long a with a silent e two letters on.
• Next in Magic e / silent e: o_e — o_e — Home, note, bone, rope. Reliable, with come, some, done, none, gone and one as a frequent irregular set.
• All reading rules

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