So, What are Digraphs?
Digraphs are simply sounds represented by two letters together in the English Language. There are two kinds – vowel digraphs and consonant digraphs.
If you were listening in on phonics training for teachers and heard the term digraph, you’d likely be thinking, “What on earth is a digraph?” Surely, I don’t really need to know about that! The thing is moms, you already know about this phonics term. You just haven’t labeled these graphemes as digraphs…YET. You’ve called them something else.
An example of a consonant digraph is ‘ch’ spells /ch/. I remember when introducing digraphs, I would ask students, “Which letter in the alphabet spells /ch/? At first, you could see their gears turning trying to figure out which letter did spell /ch/. Then their faces turned to shy smiles as they realized their teacher had just asked them a trick question! That’s how I would engage students when introducing digraphs.
When to Teach Digraphs?
When do you teach digraphs to your beginning reader? After you have introduced and practiced the Alphabetic Principle, or the 1:1 correspondence between phonemes and graphemes, or sounds and letter symbols for all the single consonants and short vowels in the alphabet. Your child should be able to read and spell basic CVC, consonant-vowel-consonant words, such as ‘big’, ‘cut’, ‘dog’, ‘map’, etc. before introducing consonant digraphs or vowel digraphs.
Consonant Digraphs to Teach in Kindergarten
You should teach the following 4 consonant digraphs first: ‘ck’ spells /k/ at the end of a word after a short vowel as in the word ‘pack’ or ‘sick’, ‘sh’ spells /sh/ as in the word ‘shop’, ‘ch’ spells /ch/ as in the word ‘chip’, voiced ‘th’ spells /th/ as in the word ‘them’ and ‘th’ unvoiced /th/ as in the word ‘thin’. You could also introduce the next two – ‘wh’ spells /w/ as in the word ‘when’ and ‘ph’ spells /f/ as in the name ‘Phil’.
If you’re interested in know more about HOW to teach digraphs after working through lessons teaching the single consonants and short vowels of the alphabet inside my course TEACH YOUR CHILD TO READ: Confidently Model Simple Phonics Skills at Home, which includes a complete printable kindergarten phonics curriculum with scripted parent pages and student pages with large-sized font, easy to read for beginning readers.
I think you’ll love the tutorials I include with each phonics skill (yes, it’s me in the talking bubble), showing you HOW I teach each phonics skill. Digraph lessons for CK through PH are printable lessons 44-50.
Vowel Digraphs
An example is the spelling ‘ea’ for the long ‘e’ vowel sound as in the word ‘eat’, or the ‘oa’ vowel team for the long ‘o’ as in the word ‘boat’. These letter combinations are a more advanced phonics skill, so typically, you would teach this to your child in first grade, not Kindergarten.
Conclusion
So, now you know what these phonics terms are, when to teach them, and in which order. Be sure to finish teaching single consonant and short vowels of the alphabet before teaching the concept that one sound can be represented by two letters.
These common sounds will help you Kindergarten reader decode more words in simple texts he or she reads. When your child can quickly identify sounds in words represented by more than one letter, she will inversely use this reading and spelling strategy to accurately spell sounds in words represented by more than one letter, such as ‘sh’ spells /sh/, ‘ck’ spells /k/ after a short vowel at the end of a word, ‘ch’ spells /ch/, ‘th’ spells /th/, and so on.
