Digraphs sh, ch and th: Which Letter Team Do You Hear?

A table fills this 1st grade page, with three columns headed sh, ch and th and eight numbered rows, each starting with a picture. Every row repeats the three letter teams as chips, and the child says the name of the picture and circles the letter team they hear. The sheet shown runs a mushroom, a shrimp, a chair, a bar of chocolate, a jellyfish, a thumb, a bench and a feather, so sh comes up three times, ch three times and th twice. The team sits at the start of four words, in the middle of mushroom and feather, and at the end of jellyfish and bench.

A digraph is two letters that spell one sound, and sh, ch and th are the first three children meet. The page works on hearing: every row offers all three teams, so the child has to listen to the word rather than guess from a short list. Pictures carry the words, so no reading is needed, and the columns line up so a quick look down the page shows whether each sound has been found. The jellyfish is the picture to watch, since its team comes at the very end of a long word; ask children to say the whole word slowly and listen right to the last sound.

One sheet, eight pictures, eight circles. Say each word slowly with the class first and stretch the sound: shhhrimp, thhhumb. This is the base page of the digraphs family, built for the first grade phonics goal of knowing the common consonant digraphs; its faces sort pictures at kindergarten, fill in missing teams, read whole words, find where the team sits and count teams in sentences.