How do you sound these phonic sounds

[Pantone363]

i-e example says five

o-e example says stone

u-e example says tune

a-e example is snake

e-e example is these

Am I just being really dense?!

DS who has just started Y1 has definitely been taught (in reception) about the 'magic e' and has explained to me just yesterday that the magic e gives all its power to the other vowel and thus remains silent, hence (he said) it is the same as a 'silent e'. I'm just waiting for him to get confused when he notices that the e in have is silent despite not having given any of its 'power' to the a.

And there's me trying to explain the concept of a split digraph and that eg. 've' in 'have' is an alternate spelling for 'v'.

DS gets very unhappy when I contradict his teachers and insists that they must be right, as they are his teachers after all.

Mrz I know it is not a new thing to avoid magic e (and silent e) but it seems that many schools/teachers continue to do so. Leaving parents having to choose between going along with things despite misgivings on the one hand, and trying to unteach/re-teach and risking their children being mightily confused (teacher says one thing, parent says another) on the other hand.

There was a past thread where a few people were adamant that capital letters had different sounds to lowercase ones. It got quite heated

I think it's madness personally

I agree it's a problem when teachers cling to what they know unfortunately this is often because they haven't had any training on how to teach reading, but as you rightly recognise telling a child that e has magic powers only confuses them when they meet the many words that don't conform.

One problem is that English letters have names, like /ai/ for a,
but often several sounds (and, any, able, father).
The main sound for a is as in 'at, and, bat, hand, pat, patter ...),
for e as in 'egg, bed, leg, leggy...' , for i as in 'in, it, sit, bitter...',
o - 'on, hot, spot, spotty...., u - up, cup, nut, nutty... .
In those words they have what is often called a short sound.

They mostly have a short sound in words ending with a single consonant (at, bed, bit, hot, cup), several consonants (bend, cost) or before a doubled consonant (batting, cupping) or.
In such words a, e, i, o and u are also called 'closed' by some.

When a, e, i, o and u are not followed by a consonant (he, go) or by single consonant and another vowel they are 'open' and mostly have a long sound (make, zero, bike, solo, mule). - Over a thousand common words spell the /ai/, /ee/, /igh/, /oa/ and 'ue' sounds by that principle.

But there are several hundred exceptions as well:
100+ words have -ve endings even when the vowel is short (have, give, defensive).

-ate endings in longer words can be short or long (delicate, inflate).

Quite a few others also don't obey that rule (apron, very, kind, only, study), but the majority of words spell short and long a, e, i, o and u by the closed/short or open/long rule.