A digraph is a pair of characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme (distinct sound), or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined. Some digraphs represent phonemes that cannot be represented with a single character in the writing system of a language, like the English ‘sh’ in ship and fish.
Digraphs are important to learn because they help us to read familiar and unfamiliar words or text as we know that’s’ says /s/ and h says /h/. When ‘s’ and ‘h’ are together in a word, they make a new sound, /sh/ as in shape.
The digraph ‘sh’ was introduced to the students of Kindergarten. Students sat together in a circle and listened to the story of ‘sh’ digraph from the big book. Different interesting activities were planned to provide opportunities to different types of learners to learn more effectively.
Students were given the opportunity, think of other ‘sh’ words and share them with the class. They shared several words related to real life like shorts, shirt, shampoo etc. They also matched the “sh” pictures with the relevant vocabulary. Later they read the text from the given worksheet and circled the “sh” words. Then they made lovely flowers of ‘sh’ by adding ‘sh’ words to the petals.
They also used the digital tool EyeRIS to drag and drop ‘sh’ vocabulary into a bucket.
telling ‘sh’ story
sharing ‘sh’ words
matched the “sh” pictures with the relevant vocabulary
adding ‘sh’ words to the petals
dragging and dropping ‘sh’ vocabulary into a bucket.
Few links for the students to for ‘sh’ sound and vocabulary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJWKudfRipc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfMtsRVZWfE
- Activity for the students
Read the story and list down all the circle words
At the Shop Shelly has a big shop. She sells lots of stuff. She sells fresh fish. She sells big and little dishes. She sells brushes and toy ships. She sells anything she wishes. Shelly has a big shop. Every shelf has lots of stuff. But you better rush to Shelly’s shop. Why? She shuts the shop at six!
Reference: https://www.scholastic.com/ems/Classroom_books/061912/images/PHONICS-Diagraph-pages.pdf