/sh/ All Positions — Spelling
Articulation · Grades K–3 · 10 cards
Session summary (SOAP)
Stays on this screen. Nothing is saved or sent.
Mark a card Correct, Correct with cue or Incorrect and the summary writes itself here.
How to run it
Ask which two letters make the sound before building. The answer is the same every time here, which is the point: ten repetitions of sh as one unit is what turns two letters into a single visual chunk. Shoe and shore have vowel spellings that will distract, so keep the attention on the first two letters and leave the rest as ordinary spelling.
Cueing ladder
Start at the top. Add support one step at a time.
- IndependentAfter building each word, the student says it aloud. Wait 3 seconds.Log as correct
- Visual cuePoint to your mouth, or show the mouth picture for /sh/, before the student tries again.Log as cued
- Verbal modelSay the word; the student says it right after you.Log as cued
- Placement cueLips rounded and pushed forward, tongue pulled a little further back than for /s/ and raised. Blow a wide, quiet stream of air.Log as cued
Adjust it
Drop to syllables ('sha' and 'shee'), or use fewer cards.
Put each word in a short carrier phrase with no /sh/ in it.
Matching IEP goal
Given word cards, Student will produce /sh/ in all word positions in single words in 8 of 10 opportunities across 3 consecutive sessions, given no more than a visual cue.
Send it home through the parent portal →About this activity
The ten /sh/ words — shoe, ship, sheep, shop, shelf, shirt, shake, shine, shore, shed — as a spelling task. Derived from the flashcard deck. Every one begins with the digraph, which makes this a clean set for teaching that one sound is written with two letters — the confusion that makes children read ship as s-hip.
What to listen for
Watch for the digraph being split. A child who writes s-h-i-p while saying four separate sounds has not yet joined sh into one unit, which matters for reading as well as spelling. Listen to the production while the letters are being placed — divided attention is where an unstable /sh/ shows itself.
Carrying it home
Ask which two letters make the sound at the start of shoe. It takes five seconds, and doing it with three or four sh words in a row is what makes the pair stick as one thing.
What's in this activity
- shoe
- ship
- sheep
- shop
- shelf
- shirt
- shake
- shine
- shore
- shed
Questions
- How is this different from the flashcards?
- Same ten words, built from letters. It gives fewer productions per minute and makes the digraph visible, which helps children who are also learning to read.
- Is it free?
- Yes, no account and no card needed.
- Why is a digraph confusing?
- Because two letters make one sound. A child who knows s and h separately will try to say both, which produces s-hip rather than ship — so the pair has to be taught as a single unit.
Use this board with your caseload
With a free account, every correct, cued and incorrect mark is saved to the student and scored against their IEP goal, with the data written up for you. Assign it as home practice through the parent portal.
Track progress freeFree for SLPs. No card, no trial clock.