Digraphs (sh, ch, th, wh, ph): 8 Activities That Work

Digraphs are one of the first moments phonics gets genuinely counterintuitive. A child who has learned “s says /s/” and “h says /h/” is confused when they see sh and it makes neither sound. That’s the digraph lesson: some letter pairs act as a team and make a brand-new sound together.

The 5 Core Digraphs

• sh /sh/ — ship, shop, wish, fish, brush
• ch /ch/ — chin, chop, bench, much, church
• th /th/ — think, thin (unvoiced) / the, this, that (voiced)
• wh /hw/ — when, what, where, while, white
• ph /f/ — phone, photo, graph, elephant, alphabet

Also common: ck (back, duck) and ng (ring, song), which appear at the ends of words.

8 Digraph Activities

1. “Two letters, one sound” sorting. Write sh, ch, th, wh on four cards. Read 12 digraph words aloud. Child places each word under the matching digraph card.

2. Digraph mystery bag. Put small objects in a bag (shell, chip, thumb picture, wheel picture). Pull one out; child names it and says which digraph it starts with.

3. Digraph dictation. Call out a digraph word slowly. Child writes it on a whiteboard. Check together: “Did you write two letters for that one sound?”

4. Color-coded digraph reading. In a short text, your child highlights each digraph in a specific color. Seeing how often they appear builds automaticity.

5. Digraph word building. Give your child a digraph card (sh). Combine it with vowel-ending cards (-ip, -op, -ell, -ark) to build words: ship, shop, shell, shark. Read each aloud.

6. Digraph tic-tac-toe. Replace X and O with two digraphs (sh vs. ch). Players can only mark a square if they correctly read a word containing their digraph.

7. “Starts or ends?” game. Call out a word with a digraph. Child says whether the digraph is at the start or end: wish → end; shop → start.

8. Decodable digraph books. Read books at the digraph level. Have your child tap the two digraph letters together when they see them, then say the single sound.

A Note on ‘ck’

ck is technically a digraph (two letters, one /k/ sound) but behaves differently: it only appears after short vowels and never at the start of a word. Teach it as a spelling rule rather than a reading rule: “After a short vowel at the end of a one-syllable word, we use ck.” Examples: back, duck, lick, rock, truck.