3.1 Prepare for Consonant Digraphs Instruction
Consonant Digraphs Skill Explainer
Lisa Glickman
Word Recognition x Language Comprehension = Reading Comprehension
Assessment
The process of measuring students' progress and providing information to help guide instruction
(active)
Word Recognition
The ability to see a word and know how to pronounce it without consciously thinking about it
Phonological Awareness
A group of skills that enable you to recognize and manipulate parts of spoken words
Articulation
The production of speech sounds.
Articulation Skill Explainer
Syllables
Part of a word organized around a single vowel sound
Onset-Rime
Two parts of a word: onset is the initial sound; rime is the vowel and any consonant sounds that follow it.
Phonemic Awareness
The ability to recognize and manipulate individual sounds within a spoken word
Phoneme Segmentation and Blending
- Overview of Phoneme Segmentation and Blending
- When to Teach Phoneme Segmentation and Blending
- How to Teach Segmentation and Blending
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for Phoneme Segmentation and Blending
- Assessing Your Students
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Phoneme Segmentation & Blending
(active)
Phonics
A method for teaching children the relationship between spoken sounds and written letters so they can learn to decode and encode
Sound-Letter Correspondence
The relationship between a phoneme and the grapheme that spells it
Letter Names and Sounds Skill Explainer
- Overview of Letter Names and Sounds
- When to Teach Letter Names and Sounds
- How to Teach Letter Names and Sounds
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for Letter Names and Sounds
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- For Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
(active)Phonics Patterns
Common letter combinations found in words.
Short Vowels Skill Explainer
- Overview of Short Vowel Sounds
- When to Teach Short Vowel Sounds
- How to Teach Short Vowel Sounds
- Videos: See it in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for Teaching Short Vowels
- Student Practice Activities with Short Vowels
- Assessing Your Students
- For Students Who Need Additional Support
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Closed Syllables Skill Explainer
- Overview of Closed Syllables
- When to Teach Closed Syllables
- How to Teach Closed Syllables
- Lesson Plans for Teaching Closed Syllables
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- For Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Glued Sounds Skill Explainer
Open Syllables Skill Explainer
Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k' Skill Explainer
- Overview of Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k'
- When to Teach Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k'
- How to Teach Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k'
- Lesson Plans for Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k'
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Consonant Digraphs Skill Explainer
‘-ck’ Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
- Overview of the '-ck' Spelling Rule
- When to Teach the '-ck' Spelling Rule
- How to Teach the '-ck' Spelling Rule
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for the '-ck' Spelling Rule
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
- Overview of the FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule
- When to Teach the FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule
- How to Teach the FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for the FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
‘y’ as a Vowel Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Soft 'c' and Soft 'g' Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
R-Controlled Vowels Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Vowel Teams and Dipthongs Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
'-tch' Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
- Overview of '-tch' Spelling Rule
- When to Teach '-tch' Spelling Rule
- How to Teach '-tch' Spelling Rule
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for '-tch' Spelling Rule
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
'-dge' Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
- Overview of '-dge' Spelling Rule
- When to Teach '-dge' Spelling Rule
- How to Teach '-dge' Spelling Rule
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for '-dge' Spelling Rule
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Consonant '-le' Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Schwa Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Irregularly Spelled High-Frequency Words
High-frequency words that have a part of their spelling that has to be memorized
Irregularly Spelled High-Frequency Words
Multisyllable Words
Words that have more than one word part
Prefixes
How to add meaningful beginnings to words
Suffixes
How to add meaningful endings to words
Language Comprehension
The ability to understand the meaning of spoken words
Reading Comprehension
The ability to understand the meaning of printed text
Text Considerations
Characteristics of a text that impact the ease or difficulty of comprehension.
Strategies and Activities
How a reader approaches a specific text, depending on their purpose for reading
Reader’s Skill and Knowledge
The skills and knowledge a reader brings to the reading task that are necessary for comprehension
Sociocultural Context
Elements in a classroom that affect how well a child learns to read
Fluency
The ability to read accurately with automaticity and expression
Fluency: Accuracy, then Automaticity
Reading or decoding words correctly (accuracy) and reading at an appropriate rate (automaticity)
Accuracy, then Automaticity Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Fluency: Expressive Text Reading
Reading characterized by accuracy with automaticity and expression
Expressive Text Reading Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Writing
The act of putting thoughts into print using transcription and composition skills
Handwriting, Spelling, and Typing
Methods for translating speech into written words
Handwriting and Letter Formation Skill Explainer
Sentence Writing
Composing a complete statement, question, exclamation, or idea with proper grammar and punctuation
Writing a Simple Sentence Skill Explainer
Sentence Expansion Skill Explainer
- Overview of Sentence Expansion
- When to Teach Sentence Expansion
- How to Teach Sentence Expansion
- Video: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plan for Sentence Expansion
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- For Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Features of Structured Literacy
A systematic and explicit approach to teaching reading based on research
Our instruction here should go from simple to complex.
- We typically begin with ‘ch’ and ‘sh’ because there are many words that students can read and spell with those digraphs. Next we move to ‘th,’ which is also common in words that students can read and spell but is a bit trickier because it makes both a voiced and unvoiced sound.
- We teach ‘wh’ and ‘ph’ later on in the sequence because there are not many words this early in the sequence with those digraphs that students can read and spell.
- We begin having students read one-syllable words with digraphs before moving to multisyllabic words.
Select the Digraph for Focus
When first introducing digraphs, we typically introduce one at a time. We teach lessons for ‘ch’, ‘sh’, ‘th’ first because there are many words that can be read and spelled with these digraphs and the consonants and vowel sounds that students have been taught.
‘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, whiz). At this point in the continuum, we teach the sounds for ‘wh’ and ‘ph’ and can include them in flash card warm up, but we do not teach full lessons for reading and spelling words with these digraphs.
In first and second grade we can focus more on the digraphs ‘wh’ and ‘ph’ as they appear more frequently in question words that students see in text, and hear in words like phonics, photo, and phone.
In first grade, choose one digraph to focus on at a time. If working with older students, depending on their ability you can teach multiple digraphs together.
Consider Teaching Strategies to Use in Your Lesson
The Reading Universe lesson plans integrate specific teaching strategies for teaching children to spell and read words and sentences with consonant digraphs, including flash cards, and the roller coaster and build-a-word strategies. We use a combination of these strategies as we have students practice sounds, words in isolation, phrases, and sentences.
Here is an example of how to use the build-a-word strategy to spell words with digraphs.

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Antonio Fierro: Let's use the builder word strategy with digraphs. The word is ship ... ship. I saw a ship out in the ocean ... ship. Right? Now you say it. Right ... ship. Let's see how many phonemes are in the word ship ... /sh/, /ĭ/, /p/. Oh, good, three. So we'll have three lines ... /sh/, /ĭ/, /p/. What's a grapheme that represents that /sh/? Mmmm, 'sh'. Oh, and don't forget, this is my digraph. I have two letters coming together to make one sound, right? My vowel ... /sh/, /ĭ/ ... What graphene? 'i'. And the final phoneme is /p/. What about the grapheme? 'p'. Let's write it out ... ship. Ship.
Gather the Materials You Will Need
Here are some materials you might need for your lessons, including numerous sets of flash cards that you can download.
To begin, here is a list of words, phrases and sentences with digraphs that you can use during your lesson planning.

Consonant Digraphs: List of Words, Phrases, and Sentences for Lesson Planning
Our word lists can help you plan for teaching digraphs. Use them in your reading, spelling, and fluency lessons and activities.
These letter flash cards with pictures help students remember the sound that the digraphs represent.

Digraphs Flash Cards With Pictures (2x4)
Print these 2x4 letter flash cards with pictures to use with small groups.

Digraphs Flash Cards With Pictures (5x7)
Use these 5x7 flash cards during your warm-up to have students practice digraphs.
Once students are closer to automaticity, you can replace the card with the picture with the card that only has the digraph letters like these below.

Digraphs Flash Cards Without Pictures (2x4)
Print these 2x4 letter flash cards without pictures to help students practice the sounds for the digraphs 'ch', 'sh', 'th', 'wh', 'ph', and '-ck'.

Digraphs Flash Cards Without Pictures (5x7)
Print these 5x7 letter flash cards without pictures to help students practice the sounds for the digraphs 'ch', 'sh', 'th', 'wh', 'ph', and '-ck'.
Our resource hub has word lists, read sheets, and decodables for practicing digraphs.