For the past few weeks, first graders have been learning about blends: a spelling pattern in which 2 (or sometimes 3) consonants are blended together, but each sound can still be heard. Some examples of words with beginning blends are: plan, snow, grow, and strange. We talked about how the letters in a blend are like the fruits in a smoothie. If you make a strawberry and banana smoothie, the flavors are mixed together but you can still taste both flavors. If you make a blend, you’ll hear both of the consonants. To wrap up our multi-week session about blends, we played Blends BINGO! Students had to read the blend words on their BINGO cards to play. They are really becoming experts on reading these important letter combinations!
This week, we began a new phonics pattern for our spelling words: digraphs! A digraph is when two consonants come together to make one new sound. You can no longer hear the letters of a digraph for their individual sounds (with the exception of WH). The digraphs we will study in first grade are CH, SH, TH, PH and WH. We discussed how digraphs are more like cookies than smoothies. When you make a cookie, the ingredients create something brand new! You can no longer taste eggs, flour or sugar in isolation, but a whole new flavor: cookie!
This week’s digraph is CH. Students first learned about CH during our normal spelling routine. We practiced saying the sound aloud by repeating “Chugga chugga chugga chugga CHOO CHOO!” as a class! We have lots of fun when we’re learning! Next students identified words that started and ended with CH and created their spelling lists using those words. During literacy stations, students sorted words by identifying if the /ch/ sound was at the beginning or end of the word. (Did you know when you identify or manipulate the sounds in spoken words it’s called phonemic awareness?) In the afternoon, students came up with five different CH words to add to our “Ch Chain”! They wrote the words in their best handwriting and then linked the words together to create a class chain. We created a chain with 54 links!
