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Digraph
A digraph is two letters that make one sound.

The digraph can be made up of vowels or consonants.

Consonant digraphs
Consonant digraphs are groups of two consonants that make a single
sound.

Examples of consonant digraphs are:

ch (CH) as in chat sh (SH) as in ship th (Z) as in

thick
wh (u) as in what ph (F) as in phone ck (K) as in sock

Vowel digraphs
These are groups of two letters – at least one of which is a vowel – that
make a single sound, for example, the letters “ow” in the word 'slow'.

When teachers teach phonics, they tend to look at one sound and then
show children the various ways this can be made and written down as a
grapheme
(grapheme: a combination of letters).

For example:
True [tro:], food [fo:d], crew [cro:] all have the same /oo/ sound,
represented by a different digraph (highlighted in bold) each time.

Day [déi], rain [rein] and they [déi] also all contain the same sound
(/ai/), but are represented by a different digraph each time.

- Teachers will also teach children about the split digraph. This is
where a digraph, such as “ae”, “ie”, “oe”, “ee”, “ue” is 'split' by a
consonant, for example:

 In the word pie [pái], you have a digraph made up of ie.

 In the word pine [pain], the digraph has been split by the letter N
to make a new word, 'pine'.
 Split digraphs are represented like this: a_e, i_e, o_e, e_e, u_e;
where “_” represents a consonant.

- Teachers may give children a group of words and then ask them to
put them into groups according to the spelling of a certain
sound, for example, they may give them the following word cards:

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 Fair [fer] mare [mer] bear [mer] care [ker] tear [ter]
lair [ler] stair [s-ter] dare [der] hair [jer] pear [per].

And ask them to arrange them into the following groups according
to the way their digraphs are spelled:

ai (lair) a_e (mare) ea (pear)

- Teachers will tend to point out various digraphs to children as they

read books. They may be given word cards to put into groups,
according to their digraphs. They will also be given phonic
activities that encourage them to write words containing certain
digraphs. It is very important for children to be given the chance to
practice writing words in order to learn the correct spelling.

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Trigraph
Your child will be taught about trigraphs as part of their phonics learning
journey. We explain how teachers explain trigraphs to children and how
you can reinforce learning at home.

What is a Trigraph?
A trigraph is a single sound that is represented by three letters, for
example:

- 'Match', the three letters 'tch' at the end make only one sound.

Other examples of trigraphs are:

igh [ái] as in sigh

ore [o:r] as in bore
air [e:r] as in fair
ear [i:r] as in dear
are [e:r] as in dare

All the trigraphs above will be taught to children in Year 1.

Teaching methods vary as to how these are taught, but the process may
go as follows:

1. A teacher may choose a trigraph to focus on for a few days, for

example: tch.
She may start by writing a word on the board: 'match' and asking
children to say it out loud. She may then underline the letters 'tch'
and encourage the children to make this noise.

The children may then be asked to do a number of activities of the

week. These may include any of the following:

Simply writing the letters 'tch' on their own mini-whiteboard, to

practice forming the letters in order and joining them together.

Being given some cut-up words cards, some with 'tch' on the end
and some with an ending they have learnt previously, such as: 'ck',
for example:

clock match rock sock

catch snatch tick stack

Children then need to put the words into two groups, according to
their endings.
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Fill-the-gaps worksheets, where children are given a picture and

then a word with the ending missing, for example:

ha_ _ _

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Phonics
Phonics sounds
Sort your phonemes from your graphemes, decoding from encoding and
digraphs from trigraphs with our parents' guide to phonics teaching.

Our step-by-step explanation takes you through the different stages of

phonics learning, what your child will be expected to learn and the
vocabulary you need to know.

What is phonics?
Phonics is a method of teaching children to read by linking sounds
(phonemes) and the symbols that represent them (graphemes, or letter
groups). Phonics is the learning-to-read method used in primary schools
today.

What is a phoneme?
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound. The phonemes used when
speaking English are:

Print out a list of phonemes to practice with your child or listen to the
individual sounds being spoken with our phonics worksheets.

Phonics learning step 1: Decoding

Children are taught letter sounds in “Reception”. This involves thinking
about what sound a word starts with, saying the sound out-loud and
then recognizing how that sound is represented by a letter.

The aim is for children to be able to see a letter and then say the sound
it represents out loud. This is called decoding.

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Some phonics programmers start children off by learning the letters s, a,

t, n, i, p first. This is because, once they know each of those letter
sounds, they can be arranged into a variety of different words (for
example: sat, tip, pin, nip, tan, tin, sip, etc.). While children are learning
to say the sounds of letters out-loud, they will also begin to learn to write
these letters (encoding).

They will be taught where they need to start with each letter and how
the letters need to be formed in relation to each other. Letters (or
groups of letters) that represent phonemes are called graphemes.

Phonics learning step 2: blending

Children need to go from saying the individual sounds of each letter, to
being able to blend the sounds and say the whole word. This can be a
big step for many children and takes time.

Phonics learning step 3: decoding CVC words

Children will focus on decoding (reading) three-letter words arranged:

Consonant + vowel + consonant (CVC words) for some time.

They will learn other letter sounds, such as the consonants g, b, d, h and
the remaining vowels e, o, u. Often, they will be given letter cards to put
together to make CVC words which they will be asked to say out loud.

Examples: hat her sip top cup

Phonics learning step 4: decoding consonant clusters in CCVC

and CVCC words

- Consonant + consonant + vowel + consonant, such as:

Examples: star scar chat clap frog from then them that this

Children will also learn about consonant clusters: two consonants

located together in a word, such as: tr, cr, st, lk, pl. Children will learn
to read a range of CCVC words such as:

trap crop street talk please

They will also read a range of CVCC words (consonant + vowel +

consonant + consonant) such as:

milk fast cart band find left help cent long sing rent
land

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Phonics learning step 5: Vowel Digraphs

Children are then introduced to vowel digraphs. A digraph is two vowels
that together make one sound such as: /oa/, /oo/, /ee/, /ai/. They will
move onto sounding out words such as: deer [di:r], hair [je:r], boat
[boat], etc. and will be taught about split digraphs (or 'magic e').

They will also start to read words combining vowel digraphs with
consonant clusters, such as: train [tréin], groan [gróun] and stool [s-to:l].

Phonics learning step 6: Consonant Digraphs

Children will also learn the consonant digraphs (two consonants that
together make one sound) ch and sh and start blending these with other
sounds to make words, such as: chat [chat], shop [shop], chain [chéin]
and shout [cháut].

Encoding, or learning to spell as well as read

Alongside this process of learning to decode (read) words, children will
need to continue to practice forming letters which then needs to move
onto encoding.

Encoding: is the process of writing down a spoken word, otherwise

known as spelling.

They should start to be able to produce their own short pieces of writing
and spelling the simple words correctly.

It goes without saying that reading a range of age-appropriate texts as

often as possible will really support children in their grasp of all the
reading and spelling of all the phonemes.

Phonics learning in KS1

By the end of “Reception”, children should be able to write one
grapheme for each of the 44 phonemes.

In Year 1, they will start to explore vowel digraphs and trigraphs (a

group of three letters that makes a single sound, like 'igh' as in 'sigh')
further.

They will begin to understand, for example, that the letters ea can make
different sounds in different words (dream and bread). They will also
learn that one sound might be represented by different groups of letters:
for example, light and pie (igh and ie make the same sound).

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Children in Year 2 will be learning spelling rules, such as adding

suffixes to words (such as -ed, -ing, -er, -est, -ful, -ly, -y, -s, -es, -ment
and -ness). They will be taught rules on how to change root words when
adding these suffixes (for example, removing the 'e' from 'have' before
adding 'ing') and then move onto harder concepts, such as silent letters
(knock, write, etc) and particular endings (le in bottle and il in fossil).
Free phonics worksheets and information for parents
For more information about the phonics system look through our phonics
articles, including ways to boost phonics confidence, details of the Year
1 Phonics Screening Check, parents' phonics questions answered and
more.

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Grapheme
What is a grapheme?
A grapheme is a written symbol that represents a sound
(phoneme). This can be a single letter, or could be a sequence of letters,
such as ai, sh, igh, tch, etc. So when a child says the sound /t/ this is a
phoneme, but when they write the letter 't' this is a grapheme.

These are all the phonemes in the English language (and some of the
graphemes used to represent them):

Learning to encode words: handwriting foundations

By the end of Reception children should be able to write all the above
graphemes (encoding). Children will learn the letters of the alphabet,
saying each sound out loud and writing the letter, but they will also learn
how to put letters together to make individual sounds.

The importance of carefully and thoroughly teaching children how to

form letters cannot be underestimated (for lots more information about
how children learn to write, and how you can support handwriting at
home, see our Handwriting learning hub). Obviously, it is really
important that children know the letters that go with each sound, but it
is also important that they form these letters correctly. Usually letters
'start from the top' apart from d and e. Children need to know how to

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form letters correctly, as when they come to join their letters, they will
not be able to do this if they are forming them in the wrong way.

Teachers teach children how to form their letters correctly by giving

demonstrations on the board, or by writing letters large in the air (with
their backs to the children). Children are sometimes given sheets with
letters on them which are marked with start points and arrows, so that
children are aware of where to start and which direction to go in.

Learning to spell: encoding

In English the sounds in words (phonemes) are represented by different
combinations of letters when we write them down. In other words, one
sound can be represented by a number of different graphemes
according to the word it appears in and different graphemes can
represent more than one sound. For example, in the words below,
the letters 'ch' represent the /k/ sound in chemist, but the /sh/ sound in
chef.

Prof. Oscar Ocando