1. Overview of Consonant Digraphs

A digraph is two letters that come together to make one sound, like 'ph' in phone or 'oa' in boat. 

Generally the first digraphs we teach students are those with two consonants. The most common consonant digraphs are ‘ch’, ‘sh’, ‘th’, ‘wh’, and ‘ph.’

Consonant digraphs can be tricky because we've asked our students to work so hard to learn one sound for each letter. Now we’re putting two consonants together and telling students that they team up to make a totally new sound! Also, when learning about the individual consonants, students saw a one-to-one correspondence — one letter represents one sound. Now we are showing students two letters that represent one sound. 

'ch' is almost always at the beginning of words, such as chin and chop. There are four common words that end with the digraph 'ch' — much, such, rich, and which. 

'sh' can be at the beginning (ship, shack) or end (mesh, hush) of one-syllable words.

'th' (unvoiced) can be at the beginning (thud, thick) or end (path, with) of a one-syllable word.

'th' (voiced) often falls at the beginning of one-syllable function words with short vowels, such as that, this, them, than, and then.  

In one-syllable words, 'wh' is only found at the beginning, such as which and when.

'ph' makes the same sound as 'f' and is found in very few common early-literacy words, like graph and phone.

We initially focus our instruction on 'ch', 'sh', and 'th' because there are many words that can be read and spelled with those graphemes and the letters and sounds students already know. 'Ph' and 'wh' are not generally taught early in the sequence because there are very few words that students can decode with those digraphs (graph, when, and whiz). At this point in the continuum, we introduce the sounds for ‘wh’ and ‘ph’ but do not focus on them for reading and spelling.

Teaching digraphs is an excellent opportunity to teach the concept of a grapheme, since a digraph is two letters that come together as a grapheme to spell a single phoneme. Letters and graphemes are not synonymous. Graphemes may contain more than one letter. 

In this video, watch reading specialist Katina Johnson from Riverside Elementary School in Toledo, Ohio, review digraphs with her students and introduce a new one — 'th'.

For English Learners and students who speak a variety of English such as African American English, their spoken language may have phonological differences from the language in which they’re learning to read, making articulation instruction essential. For students who speak African American English, one specific phonology feature (opens in new window) is that the /th/ may be pronounced as /d/, /f/, /t/, of /v/ depending on where the sound comes in the word. Also, students with speech and language disorders will need extra support with and practice articulating the sounds of /th/. 

You may also want to consider adding hand motions when teaching each consonant digraph. For instance, to teach the /sh/ sound, you can hold your index finger to your lips as if telling someone to "shush." Hand motions can be a helpful cues for students who are struggling with differentiating and making the sounds. 

Below you'll find nine high-frequency words with digraphs that you can easily incorporate into your phonics lessons. Instead of simply memorizing these words, children can learn to read and spell them as they learn about the digraph patterns. See the full list of Dolch words separated by phonics patterns. 

There's a lot more to know about digraphs! Here is some information that's helpful for teachers to understand, but we don't need to teach it to students. Instead, students should focus on the grapheme-phoneme connections that will help get them reading and spelling as quickly as possible.

The digraph 'ch' has three sounds determined by the origin of the word.

• The letters 'ch' most commonly spell the digraph sound /ch/ as in chin, chunk, and choose.
• These letters sometimes spell the digraph sound /sh/ as in chef, parachute, and Chicago.
• The letters 'ch' also spell the consonant sound /k/ in words like chorus, echo, and school.

The digraph 'gh' is also not generally taught early in the phonics sequence because it is used only at the end of a few words.

• The letters 'gh' together spell the consonant sound /f/, as in cough, tough, enough, rough, laugh, and trough.

'ng' is also a consonant digraph. There is no other English letter that represents this nasal phoneme.

• /ng/ like in sing, sang, song, sung'ng' is often introduced in phonics programs as a type of glued or welded sound: '-ang', '-ing', '-ong', '-ung'. It is reliably pronounced the same way wherever it occurs and most often occurs at the end of a word. The vowel sound before the /ng/ in a word is distorted by the nasal sound /ng/. Other examples are bang, thing, gong, and lung. Reading Universe teaches 'ng' as a glued sound (along with 'nk').
• There are numerous examples of words in which the 'n' and 'g' are not welded together but make separate sounds, including ingratiate, engineer, and strange.

'ck' is a pseudo-digraph because each of the two letters spell the same sound as the two letters together — /k/.

• We will tackle this combination in a separate skill explainer rather than teach it at the same time as the other consonant digraphs.