What Is a Digraph?

A digraph is two letters that spell one sound. In ship, the s and the h work together and make a single sound, which is why ship has four letters and only three sounds: sh, i, p.

That is what separates a digraph from a blend. In a blend you still hear both letters. Say stop slowly and the s and the t are both there. Say ship slowly and there is no s in it at all.

The six your child will meet are sh, ch, th, wh, ph and ck, and most children meet the first three at the end of kindergarten or in first grade, once short words like cat and hop are easy. Below: what each kind is, when they arrive, how to teach one in five steps, and the word lists to practice with.

Why does ship have four letters but only three sounds?

Because sh is one sound, not two. The two letters are not doing two jobs. They have combined into one, and the only way to read the word is to treat them as a unit.

The clearest way to see it is to count the letters against the sounds:

Word	Letters	Sounds	The sounds
ship	4	3	sh, i, p
chin	4	3	ch, i, n
math	4	3	m, a, th
duck	4	3	d, u, ck

Counting sounds rather than letters is the habit this teaches, and it is worth more than the six pairs themselves. It is what a child needs for every later pattern: vowel teams, silent e, and every long word they will ever break apart.

You may also see these called consonant digraphs, letter teams or, in some programs, the h brothers, because four of the five common ones end in h. They all mean the same thing.

Digraphs vs. blends: what is the difference?

In a digraph you hear one sound. In a blend you hear both. This is the single most useful distinction on this page, and it is the one most parents are never told.

Pair	Word	How many sounds	What you hear
sh	ship	1	No s and no h, one new sound
ch	chop	1	No c and no h, one new sound
th	thin	1	No t and no h, one new sound
st	stop	2	s, then t, both there
bl	black	2	b, then l, both there
fr	frog	2	f, then r, both there

The test is the same every time: say the word slowly and count what you hear, not what you see. If you can pull the two letters apart and still recognize them, it is a blend. If they have turned into something new, it is a digraph.

This matters for teaching, not just for naming. A blend is practice at holding two sounds together, which is a blending problem. A digraph is a new piece of knowledge, which your child either has or does not. Treating a digraph as a blending problem produces a child who says s-h-i-p faster and faster and never gets to ship.

Consonant blends is the other half of this comparison: what a blend is, which families to teach first, and word lists for each of them.

What are the different kinds of digraphs?

Three things get called digraphs, and they arrive at different times.

Consonant digraphs

Two consonants spelling one consonant sound. These are the six this page is about, and they come first:

• sh in ship, shop, fish and wish
• ch in chip, chin, much and rich
• th in thin, math, this and them
• wh in when, what, white and wheel
• ph in phone, photo and elephant
• ck in duck, sock and black

Th is the one to watch, because the same two letters spell two different sounds. It buzzes in this and mother, and it is only air in thin and bath. Our word list for th gives each sound its own list and its own worksheets.

Vowel digraphs

Two vowels spelling one vowel sound: ai in rain, ea in seat, oa in boat, ee in feet. They work exactly the same way, and they come later, usually in first and second grade once the consonant pairs and the short vowels are solid. They are also called vowel teams, which is where every common team, the diphthong comparison and the teaching routine live, beside the word lists and their worksheets.

Trigraphs

Three letters, one sound. The three a young child meets are tch in catch, dge in badge and igh in night. Trigraphs is where the three patterns, the short-vowel rule behind tch and dge and the mix-ups to expect live, beside the word lists and their worksheets for tch and dge.

When do kids learn digraphs?

Most children meet sh, ch and th at the end of kindergarten or in first grade. The Common Core standard RF.1.3a asks first graders to “know the spelling-sound correspondences for common consonant digraphs”, and strong kindergarten programs introduce the first three before that, once short words are easy.

The readiness signal is worth more than the grade. Your child is ready when they can read cat, hop and bed without stopping to work them out. A child still assembling those words does not need a new pattern; they need more practice with the one they have.

Wh, ph and ck usually come after the first three, and programs order them differently. That variation is normal and it is not worth worrying about.

Where digraphs sit in the whole sequence, and what comes before and after, is in what order to teach phonics skills. If your child can say every letter sound but still cannot push them together into a word, that is the rung before this one: my child knows letter sounds but cannot sound out words.

Why do digraphs matter for reading and spelling?

A child who does not know sh cannot read ship. They will try s-h-i-p, get nothing that sounds like a word, and either guess from the picture or stop. That is the practical reason these pairs are taught explicitly rather than picked up.

The National Reading Panel reviewed 38 studies and found that systematic phonics, meaning letter-sound patterns taught directly and in a planned order, works significantly better than leaving them to be picked up as words happen to come up. Digraphs are one of those patterns, and they are among the ones a child is least likely to work out alone, because nothing about the two letters tells you they have merged.

They arrive early because they are everywhere. Sh, ch and th turn up in the first books a child reads, in the small words that hold sentences together (this, that, them, then), and in the words for ordinary things: fish, chair, shoes, bath.

And they run in both directions. Reading ship is one skill; writing it when you hear it is another, and the second is harder. A child who reads ship comfortably and still writes sip has learned half of it. That is why the word lists on this site pair every set of words with a spelling sheet as well as a reading one.

How do you teach a digraph at home?

Teach one pair at a time, sound first, and finish it before starting the next. The most common mistake is introducing sh, ch and th together in one week, which gives a child three new things that all look similar and no time to fix any of them.

Order matters less than people think, but a reasonable one is sh, then ch, then th, then wh, ph and ck. Sh and ch are the easiest to hear. Th is the one that takes longest, because it holds two sounds.

1. 1

   Say the sound before you show the letters

   Say four or five words that start with the sound and let your child hear what they share: ship, shop, shell, shut. No paper, no screen. If your child cannot hear what those words have in common, that listening work comes first and the letters can wait.

2. 2

   Show the two letters together

   Write the pair on one card, not two. Say the single sound it makes, and say plainly that these two letters work as one here. This is the whole idea, and it is the step children skip when they meet the pair inside a word first.

3. 3

   Read words that use it

   Start with short words where the pair is the only new thing: ship, shed, dish, wish. Have your child read across the word rather than naming letters. If they say s-h-i-p, cover the pair with a finger and say the sound for them, then uncover and let them finish.

4. 4

   Spell words that use it

   Say a word and have your child write it. Spelling is the harder direction and it is where you find out whether the pair is really known. A child who reads ship but writes sip has not finished learning it.

5. 5

   Find it in a real book

   Open any picture book and hunt for the pair on a page or two. Finding it in text your child did not practice with is what turns a taught pattern into one they own.

Expect a pair to take one to two weeks, and expect th to take longer. There is no prize for finishing quickly, and a pair that is nearly known is the one that falls apart inside a longer word later.

What games help a child practice digraphs?

Short and often beats long and occasional. Five minutes most days will do more than a half-hour session at the weekend. All of these work with what is already in the house.

• Sort a pile of cards. Write ten or twelve words on scraps of paper and have your child sort them by which pair they contain. Sorting is the activity that practices the pattern rather than the words, because the answer is a rule your child can apply to a word they have never seen.
• Hunt for it. Pick one pair and find it on a cereal box, a shop sign or a page of a book. Two minutes, no preparation.
• Tap the sounds. Say a word and have your child tap one finger per sound. Ship is three taps, not four. This is the sound-counting habit in its simplest form, and sound boxes are the written version of it.
• Say it, write it. You say the word, they write it, then they read it back. Covers both directions in one go.
• Silly swaps. Change the pair and see what happens: ship becomes chip becomes whip. A child who can do this has the pattern, not just the word.

Do digraph flashcards help?

Cards are useful for one job and useless for the rest. The job they do well is linking a pair of letters to its sound quickly and repeatedly, which is exactly what a new digraph needs. What they cannot do is teach your child to read the pair inside a word, which is the part that actually matters.

Picture cards and word cards do different things. A picture card (a drawing of a ship on one side, sh on the other) teaches the sound, and works before your child can read anything. A word card teaches the reading. Children need the second one eventually, and a set of cards that never leaves the picture stage leaves the real skill untaught.

Two rules keep a card session useful: stop while it is still going well, and take the pack straight into a book afterwards. A child who can name sh on a card and cannot read shop has practiced the card, not the skill.

The digraph cards and sheets on this site are free, with no signup:

• Kindergarten digraph words: word cards, sound boxes, a word sort, a read-write-match sheet and a tracing sheet, covering sh, ch and th
• 1st grade digraph words: word cards, sound boxes, a word sort and a spelling sheet, adding wh
• Words with th: separate lists and sheets for the two th sounds, plus a mixed review that sorts them by ear

How do you know a digraph has stuck?

Three signs, and none of them is a score. You are looking for the pattern working on its own, not for a number.

• They read a word with the pair in it that they have never seen before. This is the one that counts. A word they have practiced tells you what they remember, not what they can do.
• They write it without being told which letters to use. You say the word, they produce the pair. Spelling is the direction that gives the honest answer.
• They do not sound the two letters separately, even when they are tired. A child who says s-h-i-p under pressure has it in their head but not yet in their hands.

If two of the three are there and the third is not, stay on that pair for another week or so. There is no hurry, and there is no version of this where moving on early saves time.

What are the most common mistakes when teaching digraphs?

Teaching all of them at once. Three pairs in a week is three things that look alike, and a child who confuses sh and ch has usually met them on the same day.

Naming the letters instead of saying the sound. “S-h says sh” is fine once. Reading a word letter by letter is the habit that stops a child ever reading the pair as a unit.

Skipping the spelling direction. Reading is the easier half. A child who only ever reads digraphs will look fluent and will still write sip for ship.

Treating th as one sound. It is two. Voiced in this and them, unvoiced in thin and bath, and a child who is told it is one sound will trip over half the words. Our th word list splits them for exactly this reason.

Starting before short words are solid. A child still working out cat and hop does not have room for a new pattern. Go back to CVC words for a week or two instead.

Where can I find free digraph word lists and worksheets?

Every list below is free, with no signup, and every one comes with worksheets. There is a page for each of the five consonant digraphs, and each one carries its words, its own worksheets and the thing that pair does differently.

• Sh words: words that start with sh and words that end in it, plus picture cards and a sentence sheet
• Ch words: the same two lists, plus when ch says k or sh instead
• Words with th: both th sounds, each with its own list and sheets
• Wh words: why wh usually sounds just like w, and the four words where it says h
• Ph words: ph at the start, in the middle and at the end, and a ph-or-f sort

And the digraph sections on the grade lists, for a child working through a whole year at once:

• Kindergarten digraph words: sh, ch and th, at three sounds a word
• 1st grade digraph words: sh, ch, th and wh
• 1st grade ck words: the ck pattern and when it is used
• 2nd grade -ch and -tch words: the trigraph and the rule behind it

And the two lists on either side of digraphs in the sequence: CVC words come before them, and silent-e words come after.