About this activity
The sixteen digraph words — ship, shell, fish, wash, chip, chair, beach, lunch, thin, think, bath, tooth, whale, wheel, when, white — as a spelling task. Derived from the flashcard deck, and it addresses the specific confusion that digraphs create in writing: a child who hears one sound has to produce two letters, and the pair is not predictable from the sound alone.
How to use it in a session
Say the word, ask which two letters make that sound, then build it. The middle question is the whole activity — a child who can answer it will spell the word, and a child who cannot will guess at the vowel and get the digraph wrong too. Sort the sixteen by digraph as you go, so the student meets four sh words in a row rather than a mixed list.
What to listen for
Watch for the digraph split across a syllable boundary in the longer words. Lunch and beach put the digraph at the end where children often write only one letter, and wash is the one most often spelled with an s alone. Notice whether the vowel or the digraph is the error — they are different problems and easy to conflate when the whole word is wrong.
Carrying it home
Ask for the two letters rather than the whole word. What two letters make the sound at the start of ship is a question that fits in a car and targets exactly the thing.
Questions
- Is this the same as the flashcard deck?
- Same sixteen words, built from letters instead of read from a card. It suits students working on digraphs in spelling as well as in reading or speech.
- Is it free?
- Yes, no account or card needed.
- Why is 'wash' spelled with sh when it sounds like it could be s?
- Because it is a genuine /sh/ sound at the end. Hearing the difference between wash and was is a useful contrast to draw directly, since the spelling follows the sound here.