strategies to help children read phase 3 digraphs in words

[Guest]

Hi

 

I'm looking for some new ideas to try to support my year 1 children who know the sounds made by each of the digraphs when just shown the digraph, but still sound out the individual letters rather than instantly 'seeing' the digraph when they come across them in words.

 

Any strategies would be much appreciated.

[Rufus]

Have you tried using words that are written in different colours to make them more aware that each phoneme is a different colour? light

[Susan]

I always had that problem too. Rufus' idea sounds good.

We had some diagraph /phase magnets that seemed to help with familiarisation but it does take time and practice.

[Guest]

We put sentences with digraphs in on the IWB or board and children come and highlight the digraphs, then read the sentences. Any phonics games like treasure or trash or cross the river help with fluency of reading. We tend to give lots of practice reading the 1 digraph being taught before moving onto games where they are all mixed up. Learning to write the digraphs in phoneme frames also helps with reading them.

Also...I think it helps to use letter names when describing the letters in the digraph, to avoid the temptation to 'sound them out'. We have spent some time talking about this as a whole staff, which was good although involved quite a lot of controversy at the time.