3. How to Teach Consonant Digraphs

In this section we are going to walk you through the steps for teaching consonant digraphs to your students:

• 3.1 Prepare for Instruction — Word lists and teaching strategy demonstrations
• 3.2 Explicitly Teach the Skill — Example lessons on how to reinforce the digraph sounds for reading and spelling

At Reading Universe we use an evidence-based approach popularly known as structured literacy. Structured literacy is a way of organizing and delivering reading instruction to ensure students get all the skills they need in an efficient timeframe — and without any gaps. With this approach, teachers use explicit or direct instruction. Read more about structured literacy here.

We recommend a daily phonics lesson routine that looks something like this:

Download the Phonics Lesson Daily Checklist (opens in new window).

Your lesson will start with a quick phonemic awareness activity, what we call a Listening Game. For digraphs, you could ask your students to blend sounds to say a word. Here's an example you might try. Say,

The sounds are /ch/, /o/, /p/. What is the word? [chop]

In the Warm Up you'll use flash cards to review the sounds your students already know. For example, you will want to review short vowel sounds as well as any consonants that might be used during dictation. Watch this demo to see how we recommend introducing the digraph flash cards (opens in new window).

New/Review is where you will introduce digraphs.

During Dictation, students will practice spelling words with the digraphs that they just learned. 

All of this leads up to the last portion of the lesson, in which students practice putting all the skills together for Reading with Fluency.

Students will read and spell words with digraphs more easily when they first practice with words that contain short vowels. For example, words such as rash, chip, and this will allow students to focus on recognizing and building accuracy and automaticity with digraphs when initially introduced. Once long vowels and other spelling patterns have been introduced, words such as shake, cheese, theme, and wheat are appropriate.