Read Digraph Words and Match the Pictures

Six word cards run down the left of this 1st grade page and six pictures down the right, each with a dot. In every word the letter team is marked in a pale bubble. The child reads each word and draws a line to the picture it names. On the sheet shown the words are starfish, tooth, cheese, chicken, ship and feather, and the pictures, in a different order, are a tooth, a feather, a ship, a wedge of cheese, a starfish and a chicken. The team sits at the start of three words, the end of two and the middle of one.

This is the reading face of the digraphs family. The other pages start from a picture; this one starts from print, so the child has to decode the word before the picture can help. Marking the team in each word shows the child where two letters work as one sound, which is the part of the word most likely to trip a new reader. The words are short and regular around the team, and starfish is built from two words the child may already know, so first grade readers can sound out every word from start to finish.

One sheet, six words, six lines. Read the list together first with children who are still sounding out, and let them point to the marked team as they say each word. Cheese and chicken both start with ch, so the child has to read past the team to tell them apart, which is the best moment to check real decoding. The missing digraphs face works the other way round, from picture to spelling, and the two make a good pair in one week.