One of the most important activities a parent can do at home with their child is to practice all their reading and spelling skills through phoneme-grapheme mapping (PGM). PGM is basically matching each and every sound with the letter or letters used to spell the sound. It makes our brains do exactly what they are supposed to do in order to store those words into long-term memory. We call that orthographic mapping, and we must get their brains to attach the sounds with the letters in order to store the word in the visual word form area. That’s the area of the brain that stores the letter/sound combination so we can read the word accurately and automatically. The ability to segment and blend three to four sounds in words typically happens by the end of Kindergarten or the beginning of 1st grade, but can occur earlier. Click here to visit a Reading Rockets page that describes typical phoneme development.
If you have a list of words with a consonant vowel consonant (CVC) pattern, you would have them use three boxes to spell the word. Let’s say the word is CAT. Have them move phoneme chips or pennies or something to represent each sound in three different boxes. Then move each chip as they say the sound, and write the letter for each sound, one at a time, /k/ is spelled C, /a/ is spelled A, /t/ is spelled T. Then have them tap under each sound and say /k/ /a/ /t/, /cat/.
Example video here.
A digraph is two letters that join together and make one sound, like CK, SH, CH, WH, TH, PH, NG. A digraph should be considered ONE consonant sound. So, a word like DISH has 3 sounds, /d/ /i/ /sh/, and should only be in three boxes. Example video here.
A trigraph is three letters that join together and make one sound, like TCH and DGE spell the /ch/ and /j/ sounds. They should be handled like a digraph. All three letters should be spelled in the one box. Example video here.
Other closed syllable patterns that show up will be:
CCVC
CVCC
CCVCC
CCCVC
CCCVCC
CCCVCCC
Example video here.