Introduction to the Units on digraphs

You will remember from Unit 12 in the Handbook that there are many more sounds in English than the 26 letters we have at our disposal, and that one way around this is to have two letters representing one sound - in other words, digraphs.  See Handbook, pages 202-3. You have already taught the digraphs oo and ee and so children will be familiar with the concept. There are a great many more in the English language, of course, and these can now be introduced a few at a time.

The difficulties with digraphs

It is not wise to view the digraphs as just another set of sounds to teach, and introduce them in rapid succession like the letters in Unit 1 of SoundWorks. Digraphs involve two serious difficulties for children. The first is that they are not very consistent in their use. For example: ou make the ‘ou’ sound, as in out and ground, but so also do ow, as in how and clown - so how do you know which one to use? The second difficulty is that many of the digraphs are confusingly alike in appearance, for instance: ou  oo  oa  oi  and  ar  er  ir  or.  Clearly, if a lot are taught together, one after the other, children will get in a muddle.

The digraphs need to be introduced gradually and with care. The Units that follow provide step-by-step instructions for teaching the diagraphs ar, ou and or. It won’t matter whether you teach them one after the other all in one go, or whether you teach something different in between. The next set of digraphs should to be introduced after an appropriate gap. The Units on these will be provided later.

The obvious task ...

In all these Units, the obvious task is to teach a new digraph and help children use it in spelling and reading.

... and the less obvious ones

But there are also less obvious ones. Children who have worked through the SoundWorks programme will have developed phonological awareness and have a good understanding of letter-sound relationships. They are able to use this knowledge to construct spellings and work out new words in reading. These skills are still slow and deliberate, however, requiring a good deal of thought and effort. For children to make any real progress, these important foundation skills need to become thoroughly automatic and extremely easy to use. So fluency is now high on our list of priorities!!
    
There is also the problem of language. If children are slow to begin to read and write, they will have missed many of the language experiences that other children enjoy. This means that when they eventually come to write their own stories, they often ‘can’t think what to write’ or they come up with sentences that are disappointingly poor and uninteresting. In the work you do with digraphs, there will be activities that encourage children to think of ideas and develop the quality of their sentences.  

So, as you work through these Units, two things will be happening. On the surface, you will be teaching your child a new digraph. Less obviously, you will be creating valuable opportunities for him to develop his use of language and bring fluency to his phonological skills.

A full menu for the Units on digraphs can be viewed by clicking here: