What is the difference between a digraph and a blend?

In a digraph, two letters make one new sound and neither original letter can be heard: sh, ch, th, wh, ck. In a blend, each consonant keeps its own sound and both are heard, just close together, as in the bl of black. Say the word slowly and count the sounds: shop has three, stop has four. That counting test settles it every time.

Should I teach the two th sounds separately?

Not at this stage. Teach th as one thing and let your child try the quiet version first; if the result is not a word, they try the voiced one. Most children sort the pair out through reading over a few months. Naming them as voiced and unvoiced early makes a child think about their own tongue in the middle of a sentence, which costs more than it gains.

My child reads ship as sip. What do I do?

They are seeing the s and skipping the h. Go back to boxing the digraph so the pair is visibly one unit, and practise contrast pairs: sip and ship, sell and shell, sock and shock. Read them in mixed order, then spell them with tiles as well, because in spelling a missing h cannot be glossed over the way it can in reading.

Is ph a digraph, and when should we teach it?

Yes. Ph spells /f/, as in phone and graph, and ng is a digraph too, as in ring and long. Both come later. Keep the first round to sh, ch, th, wh and ck, which cover the great majority of the digraph words a beginning reader meets, and add ph and ng once those five are automatic in reading and in spelling.

How to Teach Consonant Digraphs — Readiness, Practice

A consonant digraph is two letters that spell a single sound: sh, ch, th, wh and ck. A child who has been taught one letter, one sound now has to accept that some pairs work as a team. Teach one pair a week, mark it as a single unit on the page, and expect three to six weeks for the main five.

The idea your child has to accept

Until now every letter has had its own sound, and that rule has held without exception. A digraph breaks it, so say so out loud rather than letting your child discover it by failing: “sometimes two letters make one brand-new sound; s says /s/ and h says /h/, but put together they say /sh/, and neither of the old sounds is in there.”

It matters because these pairs sit inside the words a beginner most wants to read: ship, shop, chin, chip, that, this, then, when, duck and back. Until the pairs are taught, a child decoding faithfully letter by letter produces nonsense on perfectly ordinary words, which is why digraphs come straight after short-vowel fluency instead of being left until later.

One sound, one box: how to show it on the page

The most useful teaching move here is visual. Draw a box around the digraph in every word your child reads for the first fortnight, so ship, chin and duck each carry one marked pair. When your child touches under the word to sound it out, the box gets one touch, not two. Keep drawing the boxes until your child starts drawing them for you.

With letter tiles, use a single tile with sh printed on it rather than an s tile placed beside an h tile. The one tile teaches the idea faster than any explanation can: sh becomes one thing to pick up and put down, which is exactly what the printed page is asking your child to do with it.

A week per pair, in this order

Each week runs about ten to fifteen minutes a day: the new pair inside familiar short-vowel words, plus review of the pairs already taught. Do not introduce a new pair while the last one is still being read as two letters, or you end up with two half-learned pairs and a child guessing between them.

sh first, because it is the easiest to hear and it can be stretched: shhhh. Words: ship, shop, shed, fish, wish, cash.
ch second, contrasted with sh in the same lesson so the two are told apart from the start: chin, chop, chip, much, rich.
th third, taught as one sound, with no attention paid yet to its two versions: that, this, then, with, bath.
ck fourth, with its position rule: it comes at the end of a short word after a short vowel, and never at the front. Words: duck, back, sick, rock.
wh last, at the front of words only: when, which, whip, whiz.

Word chains, the whole lesson in one exercise

Build a word with tiles and change one thing at a time, reading every version aloud as it appears: ship, shop, chop, chip, chin, thin, that, chat, chap, cap. The chain forces the digraph to be seen as a unit, because moving from chop to shop is a single swap of one tile, and the last step — chap to cap — takes the pair away altogether and shows what it had been doing.

Then run the chain backwards, for spelling. Say a word and have your child build it from the tiles. A child who reaches for two separate tiles to spell the /sh/ in shop has not yet made the unit, and you have found that out in five seconds rather than five weeks.

Working and not working

You will know the unit has formed when your child reads an unfamiliar digraph word on sight without prompting, reads shed and sled correctly on the same line, reaches for the single sh tile when spelling shop, and — meeting a digraph never taught, such as the ph in phone — tries it as one sound rather than two.

Trouble looks like this: shop read as four sounds; ship and sip confused because the h is being skipped; the pair read correctly at the front of a word and missed at the end, in fish, much and bath. That last one is the most common and the easiest to let pass, because the end of a word gets the least attention from reader and listener alike.

Th, ck, and the confusions to leave alone for now

Th has two sounds, the quiet one in thin and the voiced one in this, and English does not mark which is which. Do not teach that as a rule at this stage. Tell your child to try one and, if the result is not a word they know, try the other. Nearly every child sorts the pair out through reading within a few months, without ever being told there are two of them.

Ck confuses parents more than children, because in reading it is not a decision at all: ck simply says /k/. The choice only appears in spelling, and the plain version of the rule is that at the end of a short word, straight after one short vowel, /k/ is usually spelled ck — duck, back, sick — while after a consonant or a long vowel it is not, as in milk and cake.

If it is not landing, and how long to expect

Three to six weeks for the five main pairs is usual with short daily practice, and the first pair takes the longest because it is carrying the whole idea. If a pair is still read as two letters after a week, flash it on its own, shuffled in among single letters, asking only for the sound. It often turns out that your child knows the digraph inside words but not in isolation, or the reverse, and you need to know which of the two you are repairing.

If the digraph words are being read correctly but the whole page has slowed to a crawl, the problem is behind you rather than in front: short-vowel reading needs to be comfortable before a new unit is added on top, so give it another two or three weeks of repeated reading and come back. Sets for sh, ch and th live in the practice library, under faithschooling.com/worksheets/, if you want a ready-made page for the review half of each session.

First, your child should already…

This skill builds directly on:

Short-Vowel Fluency — master this first.

What your child is learning

The child learns that some letter pairs work as a team for a single sound. This is the first big “it’s not always one-letter-one-sound” step, and it unlocks a huge number of common words (ship, chin, that, duck).

Signs your child is ready

Fluent with single-letter short-vowel words
Notices when a word “doesn’t sound right” decoded letter-by-letter

The common stumbling point

Reading the two letters separately (s–h instead of /sh/), especially with th and ch. Confusing the two th sounds (thin vs. this) is normal and comes with exposure.

Practice this skill

Worksheets and decodable practice for Consonant Digraphs are in the library.

Kindergarten — Double Consonants 216 worksheets
Grade 1 — Blends & Digraphs 6 worksheets
Grade 3 — Blends & Digraphs 10 worksheets

Every set opens its first three worksheets to everyone; the rest are included with All Access.

Browse the whole practice library

How to know it’s mastered

The child reads digraph words accurately (about 9 of 10), treating the pair as one sound without prompting.

Common questions

What is the difference between a digraph and a blend?: In a digraph, two letters make one new sound and neither original letter can be heard: sh, ch, th, wh, ck. In a blend, each consonant keeps its own sound and both are heard, just close together, as in the bl of black. Say the word slowly and count the sounds: shop has three, stop has four. That counting test settles it every time.
Should I teach the two th sounds separately?: Not at this stage. Teach th as one thing and let your child try the quiet version first; if the result is not a word, they try the voiced one. Most children sort the pair out through reading over a few months. Naming them as voiced and unvoiced early makes a child think about their own tongue in the middle of a sentence, which costs more than it gains.
My child reads ship as sip. What do I do?: They are seeing the s and skipping the h. Go back to boxing the digraph so the pair is visibly one unit, and practise contrast pairs: sip and ship, sell and shell, sock and shock. Read them in mixed order, then spell them with tiles as well, because in spelling a missing h cannot be glossed over the way it can in reading.
Is ph a digraph, and when should we teach it?: Yes. Ph spells /f/, as in phone and graph, and ng is a digraph too, as in ring and long. Both come later. Keep the first round to sh, ch, th, wh and ck, which cover the great majority of the digraph words a beginning reader meets, and add ph and ng once those five are automatic in reading and in spelling.

What comes next

Once this is solid, move on to:

Consonant Blends →