What is this skill?
A digraph is two letters that make one new sound: sh in ship, ch in chin, th in think, wh in wheel. You cannot hear the s or the h in ship, since together they turn into something else. A blend is different. In a blend such as st, fr, bl, sn, tr or gr, the letters keep their own sounds and you say them quickly together: you can hear both the s and the t in stop.
Children in this practice find the word or picture that starts with a given pair, name the sound a word starts with, and sort words by sh or ch, or by st or tr. One question asks which word ends with sh, a reminder that digraphs show up at the ends of words too. The hardest question gets at the real idea: of shop, stop and hop, which one starts with a blend? Stop does, because shop starts with one sound.
Why it matters
Until now a child has learned that each letter makes a sound. Digraphs break that rule, so a child who reads ship letter by letter gets "s-h-ip" and no real word. Learning to see sh, ch and th as a single unit is what makes a huge number of common words readable, including the, this, that, they and when.
Blends matter for a different reason. Sounding out frog means holding two consonants together before the vowel arrives, and children often drop one, reading fog or sat for stat. Practice with blends trains a child to read every letter in a word, a habit that carries over to spelling.
Common mistakes
- Reading a digraph as two sounds: s, h for sh. Teach the pair as one thing, and have your child underline it or put a finger over both letters at once before saying the sound.
- Dropping a sound from a blend, so that frog becomes fog and stop becomes top. Ask your child to say the word slowly and count the sounds on their fingers.
- Mixing sh and ch, which feel close together in the mouth. Sh is quiet and steady, like asking for silence. Ch is a quick puff, like a train. Using those two pictures helps many children.
How to help at home
- Make a few cards with sh, ch and th, and give your child a sentence from a book to hunt in. They slap the right card when they find the pair.
- Build words with letter tiles. Start with hop, add s to make shop, then swap the h for t to make stop. Each change is a small lesson on blends and digraphs.
- Say a word and ask your child how many sounds it has. Ship has three, stop has four. It helps to count on fingers.
- Keep a list on the fridge of words that start with th or sh that your child finds during the week.
Worked examples
These are real questions from the Tutorsaurus digraphs and blends practice, with the answers worked out.
Example 1
Which picture starts with fr?
Choices: 🐟 fish, 🐰 rabbit, 🐸 frog
Answer: frog. Frog starts with fr. Fish starts with just f, and rabbit starts with just r.
Example 2
Sort the words: sh or ch?
To sort: shop, chin, shell, chair, shoe, chop
Answer: sh: shop, shell, shoe · ch: chin, chair, chop. Shop, shell and shoe start with sh. Chin, chair and chop start with ch.
Example 3
Sort the blends: st or tr?
To sort: stop, tree, star, truck, step, trip
Answer: st: stop, star, step · tr: tree, truck, trip. Stop, star and step start with st. Tree, truck and trip start with tr.
Printable worksheet (PDF) — one page of questions from this practice that work on paper, easier ones first, with an answer key on page 2. Free to print, no sign-up.