Teaching phonics you are introduced to terms you probably haven't heard before and as a parent trying to support your child at home, the whole thing can just be confusing.
Phonograms, digraphs, graphemes, blends, morphemes, trigraphs, dipthongs...
What are digraphs? Aren't they just blends? How are blends different? In this post, we try to explain the what digraphs are and provide you with some teaching ideas and resources to help teach them to young children.
This post contains affiliate links.
WHAT IS A DIGRAPH?
A digraph is two letters which work together to make a single sound like sh in shell or fish. A digraph can be made up of vowels or consonants.Most consonant digraphs are taught in Reception (first year at school) while the vowel consonants are taught more in Year 1.
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A DIGRAPH AND A BLEND?
A consonant blend is when two consonants are blended together but when you stretch out the word, each sound can still be heard. Blends might be the first sounds in a word or the last.
The most common blends are - bl, br, cl, cr, dr, fl, fr, gl, gr, pl, pr, sc, sl, sm, sp, st and tr but there are also some three letter blends like splat, spring and street.
CONSONANT DIGRAPHS
Consonant digraphs are those speech sounds made by groups of two consonants to make a single sound. Examples of consonant digraphs are -
/ch/ as in beach
/ph/ as in phone
/sh/ as in shop
/th/ as in thick or then
/wh/ as in whale
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
VOWEL DIGRAPHS
Vowel digraphs are made by two letters with at least one being a vowel like /ea in leaf or /oy/ in boy.
Vowel digraphs such as /ae/, /ie/, /oe/, /ee/, /ue/ can also be split by a consonant like in /oe/ in love or /ie/ in bike.
When taught, depending on the phonics program used ( think Jolly Phonics, Letters and Sounds, Soundwaves, Thrass), it's beneficial to show children that the same sound can be represented different ways. A grapheme is a written symbol (ie letter) that represents a sound. This might be a single letter or could be 2, 3 or even 4 letters said together.
For example, the words pay, aim, grey all have the same /ai/ sound but they use a different digraph in each word. Using visuals can help young children start to make sense of this. There are some rules for some digraphs like /ay/ is only found at the end of English words but for other spelling, children will have to rely on their memories and practice.
Children are offer more competent readers before they are spellers so I always ask my students to 'read' their work as a reader to see if they can pick up any mistakes themselves. Even if they can't fix it, it helps show me what sounds we still need to work on in class.
One classroom tool I love for teaching digraphs are these magnetic letters designed for the Jolly Phonics program as they include the digraphs as one piece providing a useful visual for this age group to help them see the letters working together to make one sound.
Playing games are a perfect way to practice and build vocabulary.
I'm a big fan of hands-on activities for this age group so whilst they need constant exposure to digraphs to be able to learn them, I try to use activities that are multi-sensory.
These clip cards are a good example. They help children become more familiar with sounds but build fine motor strength while building their vocabularies as well.
