Don’t Let Silent Letters Fool Your Students!

Silent letters are letters that are not pronounced when you say a word. This means that you cannot hear the letter making a sound within the word. More than 60% of English words have silent letters in them! Thankfully there are some basic rules about which letters are silent before or after other letters.

This worksheet pack has been designed to provide independent practice for your students when exploring silent letters in your phonics lessons. It contains five worksheets, each with a different silent letter activity. The activities in the worksheet pack are as follows:

• Silent Letters: Circle the silent letters in the words shown.
• Disappearing Letters: Use words from a word bank to fill in the blanks in the passage.
• Missing Silent Letters: Write the correct spelling of the words that are missing silent letters.
• Word Sort: Sort the words from the table according to the silent letter they contain.
• Cloze Sentences: Use words from a word bank to fill in the blanks in the sentences.

Answers to these worksheets are also provided in this resource.

Tips for Scaffolding and Differentiation

Check out these suggestions for providing additional support or extension to your diverse range of learners.

For students who may be having trouble decoding the silent letters in the words, help them segment each word into its phonemes. How many sounds can they hear? Which letter in the word is not making any of those sounds?

Encourage fast finishers to write a silent letter story using the word bank from one of the worksheets. Have the students swap these with a partner, then have their partner highlight all the silent letter words within the story.

Download, Print and Go!

Because this resource includes an answer sheet, we recommend you print one copy of the entire file. Then, make photocopies of the blank worksheets for students to complete.

Additionally, project the worksheets onto a screen and work through them as a class by having students record their answers in their notebooks.

Use the Download button to access the black and white PDF file.