For [e]’s a Jolly Good Fellow!

For several months now, we’ve been discussing the final non-syllabic <e> and making a list of the roles it plays in various words.  It became evident to me that my students didn’t know why it was there.  Some would insert it where it didn’t belong, and some would leave it off when it needed to be present.

Currently we have a list of seven different roles it plays when in the final non-syllabic position in a word.  Every so often I would write one of the roles for the <e> on the board, and my students would write it in their Orthography Notebook.  Then we would collaborate on writing a list of words that illustrated that particular role of the <e>.

Sometimes I would list words on the board, and the students would list words beneath it that also had a final <e> that was fulfilling the same role.  After all the words had lists beneath them, the students would volunteer to verbally explain the role of the <e>.

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Looking at the list for face, the students who explained the role of the final <e> were able to point out that in the majority of these words, the <e> was doing double duty!  It was indicating that the <c> should be pronounced as /s/, and it was also indicating that the preceding vowel should have a long pronunciation.  There was only one word on this list that did not have a long medial vowel, and that was <trance>.  My favorite word on the list was <snice>.  I loved it because of the way the girl who wrote it, turned from the board with the biggest grin.  She discovered the word <snice> when we explored portmanteau words.  It is a blend of <snow> and <ice>.

As we were thinking about the phonology of <c>, we took a side trip and talked about it more specifically.

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The students again thought of words in which the <c> was followed by an <e>, <i>, and <y>.  In words with two <c>’s, I asked, “Why is this one pronounced /s/?  Why is this one pronounced /k/?  It didn’t take long for them to really understand the phonology of <c> in a way they hadn’t before.  One girl actually raised her hand and asked, “Why didn’t we ever learn this stuff back in third grade?”  My own thoughts are that earlier than that would have been even more helpful!

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As usual, the minute we explore one facet of spelling, we run across something else that is worthy of examination.  Such was the case with the word <*changable> that was part of the list under the word charge.  We talked about the suffixing convention we follow when a word that has a final non-syllabic <e> is being connected to a vowel suffix.  The final <e> is replaced by the vowel suffix.  But then we wondered what the resulting combination does to the <g> in <change>.  We thought of words that have the letter <g> followed by an <a>.  The students thought of <gap>, <game>, <gash>, and <gable>.  In all of the words, the <g> had a hard pronunciation.  So we realized that we can’t leave the <g> without the <e> in the word <changeable>.  We reinserted it.

Having this word show up in this list was so timely!  I had just read a great post by Pete Bowers called “Noticing the Two-Step Word Sum” that he has posted at Real Spelling.  In his post Pete responds to a teacher who is wondering about the words manageable, noticeable, and even changeable.  Pete writes an interesting response and even shares his doubts about the final <e> in knowledge.  I encourage you to read it!

The list of words under the word continue was an interesting mix.  Besides this list of rhyming words, another class made a list with the words league and plague.  (Because of our earlier work with Latin twin bases, my students are familiar with the Latin twins <strue>/<struct>.  The words construe and misconstrue have become commonly heard words in our classroom conversations!)  As you can see, someone wondered about the word menu.  When we checked at Etymonline, sure enough, it was a French loan word and not a complete English word!

Last week I decided it was time to check what it is my students understand about the final non-syllabic <e>.  I gave them a list of seven words.  For each word I asked them to explain in writing what the role of the final non-syllabic <e> was, and then to write three other words that illustrate that same use of the <e>.  It is something they have done verbally many times as a class.  Now I wanted to see that understanding at an individual level.  Here are some of their responses.

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I am so pleased to hear the students explain so clearly the various roles of the final non-syllabic <e>!  And only in MY room would a student think to use phoneme as a word to illustrate a point!  Here are a few more responses about some of the other roles of the final non-syllabic <e>.

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You can probably tell that we spent some time feeling the difference between the pronunciation of the <th> digraph as it is used in with and the <th> digraph as it is used in bathe.  I described the <th> in with as unvoiced and the <th> in bathe as voiced.  But I have to say that thinking of the two as voiceless and voiceful is delightful and just as clearly stated!

The last word on the list was continue.  The students were all able to explain that the <e> prevented the word from ending with a <u>.  The following boxed answer was bonus information that followed that word and its example words.

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I love it when students willingly share more than they have been asked to share.  To me it is an indication of what they found interesting enough to remember!

As we studied the various roles of the final non-syllabic <e>, we all realized just how important it is.  We realized that in the past we’ve all made a lot of reading and spelling errors because we didn’t expect that final <e> to give us so much information about words and their pronunciations!  As a way to help others, maybe even you, we made this video.  We hope that when you have watched it, you sing right along with us in the final chorus!

 

Looks Aren’t Everything!

I am always surprised when students new to fifth grade misspell words like makeing, comeing, and lazey.  I’m surprised because they’ve been writing these words for many years.  Obviously, they never understood whether to keep the <e> or  to replace it when adding the suffix!  I may be surprised, but I’m not particularly concerned. These are spelling errors I can help eliminate!

The following Suffix Flow Chart is borrowed with permission from Pete Bower’s book “Teaching How the Written Word Works”.

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I made copies and had each student glue it in their Orthography notebook for future reference.  To begin with, we read through the flow chart together.  Someone read the first diamond.  We imagined the answer was NO, and decided where we should go next.  Then we went back and imagined the answer was YES, and followed the arrow to the next diamond.  We kept reading and following arrows until we had read all the boxes in the flow chart.  Now we were ready to practice using it.

I wrote the following word sum on the board:

smile  +  ing  –>

Then I asked someone to read aloud the first question we must consider.  Before that question was answered, we reviewed which morpheme was the base or stem and which was the suffix.  They also wrote the vowel letters above the flow chart in their notebooks.

Now the question was read again and answered.  “The suffix <-ing> begins with the vowel letter <i>, so the answer to the first question is YES.”  We followed the arrow to the next diamond shape and read the question:  Does the base or stem have a final, non-syllabic <e>?  We looked at <smile> and agreed that the final <e> was indeed non-syllabic.

Then we followed the YES arrow to the final box where it said to remove the single, non-syllabic <e> before adding the suffix.  At this point we crossed out the <e> at the end of <smile> and were ready to write the final spelling of the word.

Here is how the final word sum looked:

smile/ + ing –>  smiling

Here is how the students practiced reading it:

“s-m-i-l-e   plus   i-n-g   is rewritten as   s-m-i-l   NO e   i-n-g”

When reading it aloud, the morphemes are spelled out.  Always.  The students recognize the absence of the letter <e> in the final spelling of the word by saying “NO e”, so that they are always cognizant of its place on the base or stem.

We went through a few more examples including the word sums “grate + ful” and “create + or”.  Then I gave them each a list of word sums, had them glue it in their notebooks and let them practice using the Suffix Flow Chart independently.

Everyone got right to it.  I would say that it took maybe three minutes before the questions began.

“I’m not sure about this one.”
“What is the first question to ask yourself on the flow chart?”
“Does the suffix begin with a vowel?”
“Well, does it?”
“Yes.”
“So where does the flow chart direct you to next?”
“Does the base or stem have a final non-syllabic <e>?”
“Does it?”
“Yes.  But if I remove the <e>, the word doesn’t look right!”

Student after student said the same thing.  And while I directed each one to a dictionary to check the spelling, I couldn’t help but notice a big problem.  These students had been taught to judge whether a word was spelled correctly or not by whether or not it looked correct.

So I stopped the class and asked if my observation was accurate.  In each of my three classes, 98% of the students said that they often wrote a word two or three different ways and then chose the spelling that looked correct.

So today I feel great.  I gave them a more reliable option.  Why not just rely on the simple rule beautifully laid out in the Suffix Flow Chart?  No more guessing games.  No more taking chances.  A few less words to edit when getting ready to publish one’s writing.  Who wouldn’t love it?